How bloggers can stop smoking and save lives with social media by Laura Luxton

Working with Frank PR for No Smoking Day 2010 we’ve created a Facebook application called WeQuit that’s been specially designed to harness the power of social media to help people give up smoking.

It’s never easy to quit when you’re alone, and with people increasingly using Facebook to keep in touch with friends from all around the world, why not let these friends help you to quit smoking?

Whilst most quit smoking aids are only applicable if you’re a smoker, WeQuit takes a unique new angle by getting non-smokers directly involved. The app is designed to let people challenge friends or themselves to give up smoking in a way that feels fun – you can create custom challenges to help encourage a quit attempt by making your own rewards for success, forfeits for failure, or even pledging money to charity. We’ve also taken inspiration from social media videogames, including medals and awards to unlock as you progress to remind yourself and your friends how you’re progressing with your quit attempt.

The aspect of the application that we feel is unique however, is the fact that it takes advantage of accountability – people are often very conscious about how they appear to others on Facebook, so after they’ve publically pledged give up smoking by accepting a friend’s challenge, hopefully the thought of losing face by failing to quit will act as a really helpful motivator when giving up smoking, acting as a really useful tool to help people finally kick the habit! To keep up this communication, each WeQuit user has a ‘wall of Fame and Shame’ for friends to add comments and photos to, to keep them motivated – and a little more accountable!

If you have a blog and are interested in the cause, why not add a link to WeQuit so your readers can participate, and add #WeQuit to your own experiences on twitter. Social media really is the new frontier of helping to improve everyone’s health.

You can find out more about WeQuit, and try it out yourself by going to www.WeQuit.co.uk/facebook – for more information on No Smoking Day and tips on how to give up smoking, check out www.WeQuit.co.uk.

 post from Laura Luxton, PR & Marketing Manager of No Smoking Day

Speed2lead Sammy James an interview

San Diego, US-based Speed2Lead (S2L) is a leading global provider of Internet lead response management products for small- and medium-sized businesses. Our simple, Web-based lead response tools allow organizations to immediately respond and follow-up with their Internet leads during the peak point of interest, resulting in increased sales. www.speed2lead.com

Social Studio by Strongmail

Social Studio is a suite of tools to enable digital marketers to create manage and monitor social media campaigns. What business problem is it resolving? By providing campaign creating, management and monitoring Strongmail want to empower digital marketers to provide clear ROI numbers for work.

Marketers finally have access to the metrics that they need to evaluate the performance of their social media efforts. Whether they are launching viral referral campaigns or making content sharable, everything can be measured and tracked back to the business’ bottom line. 2010 will be the year of accountability for social media marketing.”  Ryan Deutsch, vice president of emerging media at StrongMail.

“Social Studio™, a centralized campaign management application that is now being made available to professional social media marketers. Available for a limited time as a 60-day free trial, StrongMail Social Studio is a first of its kind suite of products that enables marketers to engage their brand influencers in social channels with detailed performance measurement and analytics.”

“Social Studio Components
StrongMail Social Studio consists of the following solutions that are driving measurable results for organizations across a variety of vertical industries.

• StrongMail Influencer™ – Acquire new customers by launching viral marketing campaigns that leverage your biggest brand advocates to spread the word about your brand or offer. Get detailed reports on sharing behavior and conversions, and build loyalty segments for future re-marketing efforts.
• Social Notes® – Enable website visitors and email subscribers to share branded content across the top social networks, blogs and email. View the most popular content and social sharing channels alongside usage activity such as views, clicks and conversion rates.
• Social Direct™ Beta - Launch targeted, direct-response campaigns into Twitter and Facebook and track performance all the way to the conversion. Manage multiple profiles and analyze post metrics individually or at the campaign level in real-time.

Social Studio Availability and Free 60-Day Trial
StrongMail Social Studio is available immediately and can be accessed as a free 60-day trial for professional marketers who sign up at the following link by March 22: http://www.strongmail.com/socialstudio”

How do you create, manage and monitor your campaigns?

London Blog Club thanks

I would like to thank everyone who came to last night’s London Blog Club and made it such a successful night.

Thanks in particular go to our sponsors for the night Chris Tradgett and the team at  http://buy.at/ / www.digitalwindow.com/ for providing a great prize and buying the drinks. 

I would also like to thank our speaker Jörgen Sundberg for a great talk about personal branding which generated some great conversation you can find out more at  http://PersonalBrandingUK.com what did you miss? See the comments below.

Our next meetup is on the 7th April more details here http://www.meetup.com/London-Blog-Club/calendar/12787351/

The speaker next month will be www.twitter.com/SelenaChanLive talking about blogging and PR as well as how bloggers and PR agencies can work together.

“Excellent meetup. Friendly atmosphere. Great crowd. Tamara & I want to thank everyone to share their knowledge & suggestions with us. We spent a nice and productive time. All credit goes to Newlands, Marko and Filip.…”

London Blog Club March Meetup

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1 hour ago

Marcin Grodzicki commented on a Meetup

“Great meetup yesterday – thanks everyone for helping me with my project and Jorgen especially for tips on LinkedIn. Great job Filip, Marco and Murray. See you all in May ”

Mar 10 7:00 PM

London Blog Club March Meetup

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2 hours ago

Chris Tradgett commented on a Meetup

“Was good to meet you all last night – perhaps we’ll double the numbers next month as well? Congrats again to Tamara who will soon be getting her ticket for Social Media World Forum www.socialmedia-forum.com – come and say hi if you’re attending too”

Mar 10 7:00 PM

London Blog Club March Meetup

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3 hours ago

Dotun Adeoye commented on a Meetup

“I agree with Laura, it was a very well spent Wednesday evening. Many useful tips from fellow bloggers. I look forward to the next event.”

Mar 10 7:00 PM

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3 hours ago

Sharon Chan commented on a Meetup

“Great crowd of bloggers, very interesting speeches, smiles all round! : )”

Mar 10 7:00 PM

London Blog Club March Meetup

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3 hours ago

Philippe says you should join this group…

“Great opportunity to network and bounce ideas off people.”

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3 hours ago

Philippe attended a Meetup

“The meeting provided some great insight into using professional social networking sites (such as Linked In) to generate interest in blogs. Drinks were provided by buyat.com”

Mar 10 7:00 PM

London Blog Club March Meetup

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12 hours ago

Keith Errington attended a Meetup

“Really enjoyed my evening – excellent presentation (I learned a number of things – which is good going for an old hand like me!) and met some really interesting and friendly people. Good discussions and intelligent conversation. When’s the next one?”

Mar 10 7:00 PM

London Blog Club March Meetup

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13 hours ago

Laura Thomson says you should join this group…

“Relaxed atmosphere to share trials + tribulations of blogging- I am a total beginner and I have leanred lots from the masses of knowledge in the room”

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W4 Performance Ad Market Jared Klein an interview

W4 was established by leaders in online performance advertising to deliver results-based internet marketing solutions leveraging state-of-the-art platforms to drive response. We focus on long-term campaign efficiency and smart channel management, but our high-touch service will remind you of the good old days. http://www.w4.com/

Lashback Cari Birkner an interview

W. Brandon Phillips and Eric Castelli co-founded LashBack, LLC in 2003. It has grown to epitomize real tech economy, Web 2.0 companies living the startup dream with an in-demand product and a list of industry-leading clients. LashBack was founded as a consumer product driven anti-spam company, which evolved into C2B data services providing actionable compliance and reputation information for a diversity of clients associated with email marketing.

Ebuzzing UK launch

Ebuzzing is a platform that brings advertisers and bloggers together, ebuzzing enables advertisers to pay bloggers to promote their services via sponsored posts. This is one way for bloggers to increase their monetisation without adding additional banner advertising to their sites. Paid posts are comparatively new in Europe although they have been a hit in the United Stated of America for some time. I know several US bloggers who make $2000 plus per month through paid posts.

Started in 2007 Ebuzzing has been offering bloggers ways to monetize their blogs by broadcasting videos and creating content for brands. Ebuzzing  helps advertisers  increase their visibility and generate traffic to their websites.  Ebuzzing works with brands such as Coca-Cola, Intel, MTV, LʼOréal, MasterCard, Toyota, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, eBay, Canon, Diesel, Warner Bros, Philips, StudioCanal.

To take paid posts or not to take paid posts, that is the question that many bloggers ask themselves. In my mind as long as you are transparent that you are being paid and only truly recommend something that you believe in the I do not have a challenge with it. To find out what you could earn register on ebuzzing.com

Disclosure and transparency are important for readers and advertisers and bloggers are required to declare that it is a sponsored post. To keep Google happy all links must be no follow links, which also keeps bloggers safe. All articles must be at least two hundred and fifty words in length to meet the Ebuzzing quality post score.

Callsdirect David Resnik an interview

CallsDirect is a performance-based media buying company that specializes in generating quality high volume phone inquiries. CallsDirect’s mission is to use media as efficiently as possible to generate results for media owners, target the right audience, and deliver quality high volume calls to advertisers. CallsDirect is uniquely positioned in its focus on using all types of media to make the phones ring for advertisers on a fixed price basis. http://www.callsdirect.com/

The Pay-Per-Call Opportunity – An Interview with Jason Spievak, CEO of RingRevenue

Q: There has been a lot of buzz lately about pay-per-call, and most of the top affiliate networks are getting on board with it. Tell us what it is and how affiliates can use it.

Jason Spievak: Pay-per-call refers to the use of unique toll-free and local phone numbers that can be used in both online and offline advertising to track the source and effectiveness of an ad campaign. For example, let’s say you see a flyer on a school kiosk advertising a product you want to learn more about. You call that number, and the advertiser knows exactly which ad prompted your call. He may be running ads on flyers all over the country, or using any other media channels online or off, but now he knows where your call came from, and can combine that information with data from the other sources to see how effective his ads are and which ones his customers are finding to be the most relevant.

So, the ability to track these calls either online or off is what makes pay-per-call an exciting opportunity for affiliate marketing. With pay-per-call, affiliates can use telephone numbers in their ad campaigns – whether they’re doing search or email marketing, using video or display ads, social media, coupons, or doing mobile or offline marketing – and get paid for every call they drive to an advertiser. On top of this new way to get paid for their efforts, research shows that just having a phone number in your ad can increase the conversion or click rate, so pay-per-call is a real win for affiliates.

Q: Wait – doesn’t driving calls to a call center cost a lot more?  Why would advertisers want to do this? Wouldn’t they rather have consumers buy online?

Jason Spievak: That may be some advertisers’ preference, depending on their product or service. But smart advertisers listen to their customers, and customers often have questions and want to speak with someone, especially for more complex purchases.  They’ll purchase a book online, but not an insurance policy. With pay-per-call, the benefits outweigh the costs. Calls convert considerably higher than clicks – 30 to 50 percent compared with one to three percent for clicks. Plus, by adding personalization and upsell potential to a qualified phone call, the average order size is about double.

Q: So advertisers like it because more calls ultimately means more revenue.

Jason Spievak: Exactly. Advertisers can manage online and offline campaigns from one central location, while expanding their reach and improving the effectiveness of their ads.

Q: So why are networks suddenly so interested in this? Call tracking has been around for a while.

Jason Spievak: That’s true. But legacy call tracking solutions failed. They were tough to use, they didn’t take into account the specific needs of both advertisers and publishers to scale, and they weren’t easy for networks to work with, either. Today’s technology makes it easy to track calls like clicks on a large scale.  

In the past there were also issues of quality, and we saw lots of fraud in the industry – especially in lead gen. Calls deliver better quality customers. And growth in the mobile sector has helped this take hold as well – there’s more content delivered to the phone these days, so it’s become easy for consumers to interact that way.

Another point worth making is that networks realize they have only been attracting a small portion of advertiser budgets. The bulk of these budgets – 90 percent – goes to offline media sources. Networks see an opportunity to track more transactions and attract more dollars by offering phone-based campaigns for high-end products and services, to capture local and small business ad spend, etc.

Q: So how are publishers making money with this?  

Jason Spievak: Publishers make money – more money, actually – by connecting consumers with advertisers by phone using display, search, email or blog campaigns. And that’s just online. As I said before, studies show conversion rates for phone calls are 30 to 50 percent, and consumers are more likely to buy big-ticket items when they can speak to someone live. We’ve seen this high conversion rate drive double-digit pay raises for publishers who have gotten into pay-per-call. And now, because of how successful this has been, we’re seeing many networks increasing publisher commissions for pay-per-call leads.

Q: Wow. That’s pretty enticing. You said that’s just online – you had mentioned earlier that publishers can take their affiliate marketing campaigns offline. Why is that something they would want to do, and how does it work?

Well, even with offline revenue on the decline, there’s still more than $200 billion being spent in the U.S. on offline media.  Much of it is being spent to drive more than 20 billion sales calls a year. So let’s say you, Murray Newlands, have your own radio show on a local radio station. That same advertiser may also offer radio ads that you could put on your station, each with a unique phone number, so that you can track which ads are driving the most quality callers, and then focus on those ads to generate the most revenue for your ads. Or, consider the flyer example I gave earlier. For an affiliate to run a pay-per-call campaign using flyers posted to school kiosks or laundromat bulletin boards, the cost of goods is really just a ream of paper.

Q: So, essentially, pay-per-call enables affiliates to expand their reach to channels they may not typically think of when they think of affiliate marketing.

Jason Spievak: Exactly. Again, online advertising today represents only about one-tenth of the overall spend on advertising globally. With pay-per-call, publishers can tap into that incredible revenue opportunity by adding offline media such as print, TV, radio and direct mail to their online campaigns.

Pay-per-call is also a big opportunity for affiliates who aren’t ready or don’t want to get into offline marketing. Adding a phone number allows affiliates to promote more big-ticket items and services online. While in the past a consumer making a large purchase – like a computer, for example – may have hesitated to click that “buy” button because he had a few more questions about the product, he will now just call for more information, and the affiliate still gets credit for the sale.

Q: I love it! Where can affiliates sign up?

Jason Spievak: Contact us, and we’ll help get them set up in our partner networks: info@ringrevenue.com or 888-338-6101.

Q: Fantastic. Thanks for your time, Jason.

Jason Spievak: Thanks for having me, Murray.

Jason Spievak is CEO of RingRevenue (www.ringrevenue.com), provider of pay-per-call tracking technology to the major affiliate networks.

XY7 Affiliate Network Jon Fondy an interview

Find out more at www.xy7.com/

Y7.com is a leading provider of online marketing solutions through our performance-based affiliate marketing network. With a variety of online programs to market and cutting-edge technology, affiliates are sure to find the programs and options to make their marketing efforts a success.