What?

It actually read “The Now Network,” but part of the N was hidden by a mirror or other part of the bus, and my mind saw the “low” and filled in the rest, resulting in the message that Sprint was a Slow Network. The mind does that; you can read about how what the eye really sees is not necessarily what our brains interpret it as here.

After I spotted this bus and processed the information, I did a double take, and realized what the ad was supposed to say. But if I had processed this information on a more subconscious level, would I have thought of Sprint as a slow network, not realizing why? The answer to this question isn’t quite clear, and would most likely vary from person to person. But this question should affect how we shape our advertising messages.

What does this mean for you?

I’m not saying that the word “Now” should not be used because it has two letters in common with “Slow,” a word no cellular network wants to be associated with. But similarity between the two words should be acknowledged and considered slightly when designing ads, especially for outdoor ads such as buses, when more factors may be out of your control. Could have the word “Now” been more centered in the design?

When considering wording for your advertising and marketing messages, recognize rhyming and similarly spelled words that could alter the meaning of your message if seen or heard incorrectly. Unfortunate placement of ads could significantly influence the success of a campaign, so take small factors such as this into consideration.

I’ve been a huge fan of Netflix for about a year and a half. Although I was slow to discover Netflix, its unlimited media streaming found me and had me captivated. I used the streaming service often in the beginning, but found myself utilizing the mail delivery DVD service more. Since this was pre-price change, I was paying about $9 a month for unlimited movie streaming and DVDs by mail.

Legitimate Increase: Then they increased the price by $1 (November 2010).  Fine. I was paying 9.99 I wasn’t happy, but it was a dollar.

PR Mistake #1: Less than a year later, they nearly doubled my cost, separating the unlimited movie streaming from the DVD delivery service.

Since I’m price sensitive and I didn’t use my streaming enough or send my movies back soon enough to justify the cost, I rode out my existing membership until the price increase would take effect (September 1^st for current subscribers), and cancelled my membership.

 I wasn’t alone.

TDG, The Diffusion Group, estimated that between 2 to 2.5 million (12-15% of dual service subscribers), would cancel their subscriptions all together, while many more would eliminate one of the two services available. But, both on Facebook and Twitter, tens of thousands expressed that their dissatisfaction was more towards how the company spun the price increase (as beneficial towards the customer), and not the increase itself.

Then, after much of the negativity resulting from the price increase had subsided, Netflix announced that they were spinning their DVD delivery service off into a company called Qwikster. Twitter and Facebook exploded with disapproval and negative reactions.

This time, less than a month after the initial announcement, CEO Reed Hastings acknowledged its customers disapproval and declared that plans for Qwikster were cancelled.

Lessons Learned from Netflix

1. Handle price Increases with care. They are inevitable; costs go up and inflation exists. Customers will not be happy, but if handled delicately with understanding, price increases will be accepted with little backlash.  Netflix’s $1 increase in 2010 was accepted, reflected by the steadily increasing stock prices, appearing unaffected by the price increase. Its second price increase was not gradual at all, and, in my opinion, too much at one time.

2. Be honest and spin moderately. Don’t try to overspin things. Yes, it is Public Relation’s job to make bad news sound like good news, but don’t overdo it. As Netflix customer Greg Heitzmann stated in a comment to the official announcement on the Netflix blog,

“…Jessie Becker’s presentation of this upcharge–as an added choice for my own benefit–insults my intelligence and reveals the breadth of your arrogance. Had I been treated like an adult and informed of these changes in a straightforward, honest manner, perhaps we could rekindle our spark. Unfortunately, this course of action is no longer available; your condescending and manipulative tone has irreparably ruined our relationship.”

3. Listen to Your Customers and Admit when you’re wrong. Less than a month after the announcement of Qwikster, Netflix cancelled its plans, stating on the Netflix blog,  “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult.”

Netflix’s Future

Netflix has plenty of ground to make up. As of September 12, Netflix’s stock was trading at $213. Shortly after its announcement that its DVD mailing service would be separated from Netflix, its stock plummeted to $113 less than a month later.

Despite all the negativity around it lately, I love and believe in Netflix. Company’s management could have handled their announcements better, but the services they provide are still an excellent value for many. I hope to return as a member when their offerings and benefits match my justification for the still reasonable price of $8 per month for each service.

Share Your Thoughts

What are your thoughts on the Netflix Story? What is your take on the Future of Netflix? Are its competitors going to gain from Netflix’s recent decisions? Is there a company that can take over where Netflix has disappointed its customers?

Feel free to share your experiences with the company, or contribute your own ideas on how we can learn PR or Marketing lessons from Netflix’s recent actions.

This is a guest post from Michael Tomlinson of A Small Orange, a web hosting company.

Here are 15 quick pointers on SEO that will save headaches down the road. Whether your site is with a Ruby on Rails hosting provider or PHP-based, these tactics are proven to enhance visitor experience. Matt Cutts of Google agrees.

Easy Tasks

1: Make sure title tags reflect appropriate page topics to the search engines. Set the title of the homepage to the company name and related company data, such as location and business type. Avoid being wordy or too descriptive. Each page with a unique title tag stands out as distinct to search engines.

2: Some absorb written information fine without visual aids, while others benefit markedly from visual stimulation. An estimated 55% of the population constitutes the primarily visually-oriented, so embed pictures for context where possible, but not to excess.

3: Easy to read URL structure. Lengthy addresses containing unreadable stretches of characters are an eyesore. Using human readable addresses tells search engines what a page is about. It helps to maintain a directory structure that is easy to remember, in case a 301 redirect is ever needed.

4: Search engines and visitors require sound site navigation. Categorize your site so it will be easy for everyone to find exactly what they need right away. Employ “breadcrumbs,” a line of links to meta topics, to simplify navigating the site. Favor text over JavaScript and Flash for navigation links.

5: Use a static HTML sitemap to direct visitors to the most important destinations on your site, and use an XML Sitemap to appease the search engines.

Intermediate Tasks

6: Tweak the robots.txt file to disallow search result-type pages from being read by search engines. Disallow search engines to crawl URLs established by proxy services.

7: Good products and services generate their own buzz. Offer compelling content and your traffic is sure to increase. Employ synonyms and keyword variations on pages.

8: Image optimization is critical, and can reduce the size of a webpage by as much as 50% or more in some cases. Do not use a photo that is larger than what is called for; this results in the higher resolution image appearing smaller, scaling to fit its defined space. Use the ‘alt’ attribute for internal and external image files. This displays text describing the image in case a visitor cannot display it.

9: Tailor page content for users, not search engines. Visitors who read a passage of keyword-stuffed text that makes little or no sense will leave and probably not return. Deceptive tactics, like coloring keyword text the same as the color of the page background is discouraged, are discouraged.

10: Link to pages using anchor text. Clicking a link whose content is relevant to a topic, while reading, results in a better visitor experience than scrolling to the bottom of the page to find the links. Search engines benefit from anchor text, so anchor internal links as well. Make sure link color stands out from surrounding text.

Advanced Tasks

11: Categorize directories in such a way that they are memorable. Avoid having image files scattered over twenty folders; keeping the directory tree short and organized translates to friendlier URLs.

12: Use the ‘description’ meta tag. Its content ranges from a couple of sentences to a paragraph, and ideally gives a page summary. Google states it is good practice.

13: An image sitemap is of value. It can tell search engine spiders what images are at your website. This works similar to an XML sitemap for web pages.

14: A nonexistent or unhelpful 404 page contributes to negative user experience. Eliminate that by taking time to setup a 404 page that directs visitors back to the home page, and to other areas of interest.

15: For comment pages, set the ‘rel’ attribute to “no follow” so that search engines ignore link spam.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Michael for his guest post! These are some great tips to keep in mind when conducting our search engine optimization! If you are interested in writing a guest post to appear on the eMarketing & New Media Blog, feel free to send an email to me, Erica, so we can discuss a potential topic. Thanks again, Michael!

StumbleUpon

I like Stumbleupon because it’s more than just a social bookmarking site- it actually recommends pages to you based on your interests.  There are times I have lost track of time while discovering numerous sites about e-marketing or other search terms.  It has somewhat of an addictive nature to it.

Introduced in 2001, Stumbleupon is a “discovery engine” that uses your interests (determined by topics or tags you have said that you liked), and the pages you have already “liked” (or bookmarked using the thumbs up [ ] icon) or “disliked” (marked using the thumbs down [ ] icon) to find pages that you may find interesting. You can “discover” these sites by categories (i.e. “marketing”), by search term, and even by what your friends have liked. For more on how Stumbleupon works, see its about page.

Use StumbleUpon for Search

Search from the StumbleUpon Website. There are a few different ways to use StumbleUpon to find resources. The first is to visit their web site and sign in. Once signed in, enter the keyword or tag in the “Search Favorites” box in the upper right hand corner.

In this example, I’m using “photoshop tutorials.”

You’ll see a page revealing results for the search terms from pages that only your friends liked.

To expand your search, choose “everyone’s favorites” from the drop down menu beside your search term and click search.

Now, your results will include all pages on StumbleUpon that match your search term. Notice how your search results have increased by over 30,000 results.

In order to find the best result, I generally use the number of views, the number of reviews associated with the page, and if any of my friends have liked the page. These aspects have been highlighted in the above picture for easy recognition. I try those with the most views and/or reviews first, until I find what I am looking for.

Search through the StumbleUpon Toolbar. Another way to use StumbleUpon to find resources is through its toolbar within Google (The StumbleUpon toolbar for different web browsers may differ than the one I am using here).

Beside the Stumble button, click “All.” A menu will appear with all of the categories you can stumble in. For example, stumbling in “Advertising” will allow you to only stumble through pages that were discovered and placed in the “Advertising” category.  Choose “Search,” which will allow you to stumble through a query.

In the window that appears, type your search term and click okay to proceed.

You will see that you are automatically brought to a page that matches your search, as it has been tagged by others. Continue clicking the “stumble” button in the toolbar to stumble through more pages that match your search.

Other Posts in This Series: Delicious and Twitter

Other social media sites that can be used in a similar way to find some great resources include Delicious and Twitter. You can read about how I use Delicious to find resources in my post, An Alternative to Search Engines: Delicious,  and discover how Twitter is used in a similar way in my post, An Alternative to Search Engines: Twitter.

Share Your Search Methods

How do you find your resources? Do you rely on search engines? Are there other social media sites that you use to find things? Please feel free to share your experiences and tips in the comments section.

In my last post, Step by Step Guide to Setup Your Google Alerts, I gave easy step by step instructions for how to use and setup Google Alerts for your name and company name. Today, I wanted to share with you some additional unique and creative ways to use Google Alerts to help you gain customers, keep up with your competition, and other purposes.

1. Identify your Competition.

Create a Google Alert for a few different popular keywords in your niche. If a single domain name keeps appearing, then there is a very good chance that it is a competitor, and you should set up an alert to spy on its domain (see tip #2).

2. Keep Track of and Spy on Your Competition.

Create a Google Alert for your competitor’s site, which will allow you to keep an eye on how and what your competition is doing. For example, the search term: link:www.competition.com would allow you to be alerted each time somebody links to your competition For example, if you are PetSmart, you may want to try the search term link:www.petco.com.

To focus on a more specific aspect of your competitor’s site, try the search term: “keyword” site:www.competition.com. For example, if you are a company specializing in organic dog food, you may want to try “organic dog food” site:www.petco.com. This would allow you to identify whenever Petco begins offering or talking about a type of organic dog food on its site.

3. Find Jobs through Google Alerts.

Create a Google Alert with keywords for specific organizations and positions you are looking for. For example, the search term: “job” and “marketing” and “Google” would be appropriate when keeping an eye out for marketing jobs at Google.

4. Find New Leads and Potential Customers.

If you know what your customers may be looking for, set up a few alerts with questions as the search term to capture those who are actively asking those questions on sites such as Yahoo! Answers. You can then visit the site and answer the question and/or follow up with that individual directly in an email to address their question and offer your product or service as a solution.

For example, using the search term: “how do I improve my website?” I can find individuals interested in improving their website, and contact them to suggest purchasing the web site evaluation that I offer in order to identify areas of the site that can be enhanced to increase conversion and sales.

You can try setting up several variations of the questions to capture as many potential leads as possible. Because you use quotes and are looking for a very specific combination of keywords, your inbox will not be inundated with a countless number of results even if you setup 20+ alerts.

5. Answer Your Questions and Gather Opinions.

Using a * in a Google search is a little-known, but powerful search operator. The * in a Google search is used as a wildcard, meaning that the * can represent any word. For example, if you want to know what the blogosphere thinks is the most valuable social media tool, set up a Google Alert for the search term: * is the most valuable social media tool, or to be more generic, use the search term: * is the best social media tool.

6. Gather Data.

Set a Google alert for new statistics or studies about certain topics to get the most up to date data available. For example, to be notified when studies or statistics are released for childhood obesity, use the search term: childhood obesity statistics, or search term: childhood obesity research study.

Be Creative!

Take a look at Google’s Search Operators for more inspiration on how you can use Google Alerts in some interesting and different ways. How do YOU use Google Alerts? Feel free to share your creative renditions on how to use Google Alerts in the comments section.

Related Posts You May Be Interested In

• Step by Step Guide to Setup Your Google Alerts
• Social Media Tools Should be Used for PR
• Six Creative Uses for RSS

Since many of my clients have still not utilized this great tool, I’ve put together a step by step visual guide to help you or your company sign up to receive Google alerts.

How to Use Google Alerts, Step by Step

1. Visit www.google.com/alerts.

2. Enter your preferences in the fields available.

Search terms: enter your name, company name, or any other search term you would like to keep an eye on.
Type: Select whether you would like to be notified when your search term appears in blog search results, news search results, etc. Choose “everything” if you would like to be notified when your search term appears anywhere.
Volume*: Choose “All results” to receive a notification whenever your search term appears, even if Google thinks that it is “less relevant” or “low quality.
Your email: enter the email you would like to receive alerts at. If you would like results to be delivered to an RSS feed, log in to Google and choose the “feed” option, as shown.

3.       Click the “Create Alert” button.

Your alerts are now set. From now on, each time your search term appears in the Google search engine, you will be notified. If you chose the email option, you will receive an email similar to the one below each time your search term appears.

*Note: Google explains here that

“The volume setting determines how many results you see in each alert. In the default setting, “Only the best results,” Google Alerts tries to filter the results so that they are relevant to your query and high quality. If you select “All results,” you’ll receive all the results that Google Alerts finds for your search terms, without any filtering to remove results which are low quality or less relevant.”

I would still recommend using the “all results” setting in order to be able to fully monitor your key words.

For more on the importance of Google Alerts in reference to reputation management, remember to revisit my prior posts, “Using RSS Feeds to Your Advantage,” and “Social Media Tools Should be Used for PR.”

If you would prefer a professional to create a reputation management plan customized to monitor your company within your specific industry, feel free to contact me, Erica, to discuss pricing and options. With the right reputation management plan, your company will remain ahead of the competition and address potential reputation issues before they become issues or problems. Contact Erica for more details.

Twitter

Twitter is a social media site that can be used for this purpose of finding valuable content. Twitter made a huge splash in 2007 and 2008, during which you couldn’t visit new media or technology sites without hearing about it. I’ve found Twitter to be a great way to find some great articles or statistics. Twitter is especially useful for finding data in real time, as everything appears instantly.

To use Twitter’s search engine, type your keyword in the search bar at the top of the page, as shown below.

Your results will appear, and seem to be sorted in order of both relevancy and most recent. In order to find the most recent posts, you can type your keyword followed by since:today’s date.  For example, marketing since: 2011-02-21 will provide you with all tweets containing the keyword “marketing” since February 21, 2011.

Other Posts in This Series: Delicious and StumbleUpon

Other social media sites that can be used in a similar way to find some great resources include Delicious and Twitter. You can read about how I use Delicious to find resources in my post, An Alternative to Search Engines: Delicious,  and discover how StumbleUpon is used in a similar way in my upcoming post, An Alternative to Search Engines: StumbleUpon.

Do You Have Alternatives for Search Engines?

Other social media sites that I mentioned could be valuable in searching for advantageous resources include Delicious, as mentioned in the previous post in this series, and StumbleUpon.

How do you find your resources? Do you rely on search engines or are there other social media sites that you use to find things? I look forward to hearing your experiences and tips in the comments section.

In 2011, there are more people than ever who claim they can help you get to the top of the Google rankings. Most either have something to sell or are new to search engine optimization (SEO) and pitching strategies that are suspicious at best and likely to get your site banned at worst. Here are 10 tried-and-true ways to advance your SEO efforts. If any of them seem like a lot of work, it’s probably because they are; legitimately building a successful online presence is hard work, but it can pay off. Here are 10 strategies to help get you there:

1. Submit articles to legitimate article directories. Article directories allow you to write an original, helpful article and include a link or two back to your site (usually at the end of the article in what is called the “resource box”). Not only do the backlinks help your site rank higher, but old, powerful article directories actually have enough authority with Google that even their new articles generally rank pretty highly. That means the links in the article could actually send you traffic. Two of the most powerful article directories are EzineArticles.com and Buzzle.com.
2. Write guest posts (like this one). Writing a guest post (or many) allows you to expose your knowledge and writing style to new audiences (and potentially a portion of those audiences will choose to follow your blog going forward). In addition, most guest post hosts will allow you to include a few links back to your site in or at the end of your post. To find guest blogging opportunities, email your guest post ideas (or even an entire, original post) to your favorite bloggers (hopefully in your same niche) and ask if you might be able to contribute your original content to their blog. Be sure to work with them to ensure your content will be accepted by their audience.
3. Claim your local listings. If your business has a physical address, be sure to claim your location on Google Places (to get in Google Maps and localized Google searches), Bing Maps, Yahoo! Local and YellowPages.com. This will help you rank for longtail phrases related to your location (like “Orlando dentist” or “Riverside lawyer”). There are a ton of other local directories, but these “big four” should get you pretty far.
4. Set up Google Alerts for the topics your website covers. Setting up a Google Alert for “San Francisco theater tickets” would mean that you would get an email anytime the phrase “San Francisco theater tickets” is used online. If you run a theater in San Francisco, it’ll be important for you to interact with the key online influencers when it comes to San Francisco theaters. Setting up a Google Alert will allow you to reach out to anyone who begins or participates in a discussion that could be relevant to your business.
5. Stick to a plan. Don’t just approach SEO as something you do once in a while. The key to SEO is consistency. Figure out what works for you and continue your efforts, even if they don’t immediately pay off. You should measure progress in months, not days or hours.
6. Only chase legitimate links. Don’t pay for links – Google will notice. Don’t get sucked in by anything that sounds too good to be true (i.e. “I can get you 1,000 links in 24 hours”). The fact of the matter is that anything in SEO that sounds too good to be true likely is – and it’s a good bet that these types of offers will get you banned from Google and other search engines altogether.
7. Participate in forums. While some forums allow you to place a link in your forum signature, that’s not the only SEO benefit to participating. Forums are generally places where people go to discuss niche topics. The people who care enough about a given topic to participate in a forum are also likely to have active web presences elsewhere. If the resources you’re offering in the forum are good enough, chances are people who are active in that space will spread them via their other channels on the web.
8. Submit your top posts to key social media destinations. Make sure you’re submitting your top posts to places like StumbleUpon, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, etc. This will put your best work in front of many new eyeballs and often a portion of those who view your work will choose to link back directly to your post.
9. Submit your website to relevant and legitimate directories. There are 1000s upon 1000s of directories and most are just terrible. Many were built in an era in which search engines afforded an undue amount of influence to these types of directories in determining how to rank websites. Nowadays, the only directories that are worth considering, in my opinion, are local directories (covered, in part, in #3) and niche directories. An example of a niche directory is a directory of car blogs or a directory of cooking websites. Basically, avoid any directory that looks “spammy” or is simply a collection of random links.
10. Study what your competition is doing. Use Yahoo’s Site Explorer to see what types of backlinks are pointing to your competitors’ sites. Perhaps you can obtain some of the same kinds of backlinks.

Randall Davidson is the lead project manager for Audio Transcription, a transcription service that offers online transcription services. He often writes about small business topics on his company’s blog.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Randall for his guest post! These are some great tips to keep in mind when conducting your search engine optimization! If you are interested in writing a guest post to appear on the eMarketing & New Media Blog, feel free to send an email to me, Erica, so we can discuss a potential topic. Thanks again, Randall!

Today, social media and other technologies have created hundreds of ways to find the information or resources that you are looking for. With more and more companies engaging in search engine optimization every day, the most helpful resources may be buried beneath all of the big company optimized sites. Enter the social media sites, gre­at for digging these resources out from beneath all the clutter and promotional sites.

Delicious

Founded in 2003, delicious was all the rage just a few years ago. Since Yahoo! acquired it in 2005, it’s kind of faded into the background and become “old” social media. However, I still find it an incredibly useful tool and use it often to save all of the great resources I come across.

I also use it often to find some great resources about particular topics. For example, the other day I wanted to find some articles on writing an effective call to action. I simply typed in the tag “calltoaction” in Delicious’ Search box, shown below.

I was provided with a variety of sites that were bookmarked by others, in order of relevance, which takes into account bookmark titles, notes, tags, the amount of people who have bookmarked the page, etc.  The results page is shown below, along with some indications of what certain aspects of the results page are.

Other Posts in This Series: Twitter and StumbleUpon

Other social media sites that can be used in a similar way to find some great resources include Delicious and Twitter. You can read about how I use Twitter to find resources in my post An Alternative to Search Engines: Twitter,  and discover how StumbleUpon is used in a similar way in an upcoming post, An Alternative to Search Engines: StumbleUpon.

Do You Have Alternatives for Search Engines?

How do you find your resources? Do you rely on search engines or are there other social media sites that you use to find things? I look forward to hearing your experiences and tips in the comments section.

In the wide world of the web, Google reigns supreme.  Like Wal-Mart in America, however, this can mean that Google misses little things along the way—quality items you’re looking for that you’d probably find in niche search engines.  Such niche search engines, however, get so little hype that most people don’t know them.  Even if they did, typing Google has already become muscle-memory and a mindless, knee-jerk reaction when we encounter anything in our daily lives we want to know more about.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

If you’re a physical therapist looking for studies validated throughout the medical community, you would probably want to surf a search engine dedicated entirely to said community rather than Google, where anybody with half a brain and fingers can type anything they want and get it published.  Google is therefore the ultimate Athenian democracy, but that’s not the best resource for specialists with certain topics in mind for research.  For more discriminating web surfers, here are a few search engines outfitted for your needs.

• www.Healthline.com Healthline is a medical search engine for the physical therapist mentioned above and many others.  Results are developed and filtered by trained medical personnel.
• www.scienceresearch.com/scienceresearch/ Science Research is what it sounds like—a search engine that uses a science-research-based filter, ideal for scientists and scholars.
• www.intute.com This is a searchable database for study and research that searches for results by selected subject, ranging from veterinary medicine to humanities, engineering to forestry.  This could be ideal for the college or graduate student.  It’s reviewed by specialists within each subject, so reliability is hardly an issue.
• http://infomine.ucr.edu/ INFOMINE is a virtual library best for university students and faculty, built by librarians of various universities including University of California.
• www.USA.gov USA.gov, formerly FirstGov.gov, gives politically-minded web surfers access to information on federal, state, and local governments.
• http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps/map-machine.html National Geographic’s Map Machine stores innumerable maps: world maps; satellite maps of Earth, Mars; aerial imagery; and incalculably more.
• www.imdb.com The Internet Movie Database is the ideal database for any movie buff.  It features movie news, showtimes, trailers, reviews (both critical and user-made), celebrity profiles, and more.
• www.blinkx.com Blinkx TV is the world’s biggest video search engine and filters audio, video, and podcasts using not just keywords but actual content.
• http://www.AuctionMapper.com AuctionMapper searches only eBay listings and does one better than eBay—the site is loaded with maps, animation, and mindless fun.  This, however, doesn’t distract from its usefulness.
• www.technorati.com If you want to search only blogs, use Technorati, which searches only the blogosphere (that’s over 22 million sites and over a billion links).
• www.webopedia.com A great resource for all things digital, computer, and web-based.
• http://www.teddybearsearch.com You think I’m kidding, but TeddyBearSearch actually searches the web for, you guessed it, teddy bears.  You can narrow your search by features (i.e. antique, jointed, etc.), fabric, and more.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Maria for her guest post! This is a great reminder that Google may not always be your best bet when it comes to search engines! If you are interested in writing a guest post to appear on the eMarketing & New Media Blog, feel free to send an email to me, Erica, so we can discuss a potential topic. Thanks again, Maria!