Powerful
Analyzing iPad Media
March 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I’ve written about the iPad before here, and am continually stunned by what an amazing advice it truly is. It’s all about the potential of it, and it’s finally realized in a small tablet. Since it’s been released, millions of units have been sold. New markets are being created daily, with an integration with brick and mortar stores.
That’s why I’m interested in sites like tcgeeks.com. Out of all the iPad news aggregator sites out there, they differentiate. They offer truly unique content that adds value to their customers. Their site categories are cleverly broken out into top categories (ipad for schools, etc etc). Here is a quick snapshot of their site traffic:
10k to 30k visitors in 4 months isn’t bad. It’ll be interesting to see how the site performs post Google Panda update.
In a new digital marketing world, new markets are being created and new sites are adding value. How are you contributing?
Awesome infographic: Is google a monopoly?
October 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Got to give mad props to Aaron Wall and the SEOBook folk on continually making some awesome infographics. Picked this up from the big picture.
Check it out below.
Credit Scores
Some key action points from the SMX East Roundup
October 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Doing a review of the most actionable facts from the latest SMX Conference. Thanks to Search Engine Land for an awesome summary of all panels.
- 2/3 of Internet population has used a social network in the last 30 days
- Of the top 500 sites in organic traffic, 87% utilized user generated content (UGC). You can utilize this to get an “army of writers for free”. (Note from KWIMS. This is probably only if your site has engaging content in the fist place, or a in a niche where people like to socialize a lot, like tech).
- Promoted videos are ‘cheap’ to advertise on for youtube, and can drive a lot of pageviews.
- Kristjan Mar Hauksson: We did this study to prove that Twitter was fantastic at driving traffic to our news sites. Instead we found that it’s crap. The vast majority comes from Google.
- Q and A on sites generates good long tail content for SEO.
- Top 10 lists on websites are great for linkbuilding
- Answers.com passes follow links, and great linkweight
- Most common elements now in webmaster rankings are :News, Video, Wikipedia, Local site, branded domain, and images
- Develop your site to be a topical news hub for SEO
Some good stats:
(Thanks to this site for good bullet points)
- Dennis Glavin: People expect to buy within an hour after using mobile. From a PC it’s 7 days. (hat tip Amber Mullin)
- Adwords sitelinks show a 20-40% increase in CTR, and a 4%-11% increase in conversion rates
- Baris Gultekin: 55% of queries 3+ words, 70% have no exact match, 20% never seen before in past 90 days (hat tip: Danny Sullivan)
- Google Instant increases clicks on videos by 28%. (hat tip: James A Martin)
Some good arguments:
Chris Sherman: Every year we say this is the year mobile is going to be big. Is it? [listens to all the panel's answers] So it’s no then. So I ask this question again next year.
Apple ads see 76% month over month increase
September 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I love the iPad. You love the iPad. We all love the iPad. I even started an enthusiast site for the ipad (RIP).Leading vendors such as iPadLot.com continue to track the iPad, and provide auto scraped goodness for iPad news.
Many people doubted that the iPad would be successful. They were proved wrong, as the iPad has now sold more than three million iPad sinch launch date. Its estimated than an entire new market for tablet PCs has been created.
We can now see that reflected in a completely new advertising channel for marketers. Mobile marketing has been an estimated to be the next frontier for online advertising. Google PPC is getting more and more expensive, and Bing has a long way to go before they can catch up with Google advertising technology. Check out these stats from the friendly folds at Apple Insider.
The iPad is all about creating new markets
A 76% increase monthly increase is insane. That’s Google business type numbers.
Google has also stolen a lot of marketshare from Apple with their Android System. Quick Question: Why doesn’t Apple partner with Bing?
Sometimes the easier answers are the most logical. It took 15 years for Yahoo to realize that their advertising platform and search engine was terrible. Its just now they realize they are a media company, and NOT a search company.
What do you think? Is Apple the next frontier for online advertising?
Another Brick in the Wall: Videogames on Facebook
September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Welcome to the first article in an ongoing series “Another Brick in the Wall”. In this series, we will be analyzing various companies and their maintenance of their fan pages on Facebook.
The question is, why is this worth analyzing?
I’m of the firm opinion that a platform with 500,000,000 users needs to be better leveraged. There is a reason why they currently have a 30 billion dollar plus valuation.
There are some companies that have a killer Facebook presence and are doin’ it right. Let’s do a quick count of well known brands and their # of fans
- RedBull: 8,000,000 fans
- Coca Cola: 12,000,000 fans
- Oreo: 10,000,000 fans
- Twilight Saga: 14,000,000 fans
There is one thing that all of these brands have in common: user engagement.
One of the most surprising things about this is the reach that Red Bull has gotten on the web with their fanbase. They have utilized the following tactics to connect and ‘bond’ with their audience:
- Social Games
- Interactive TV episodes that are exclusive to Facebook
- Creative design on their signup page
Activities like this bring about the definition of social.
What a lot of companies fail to understand is Facebook is a different platform that requires active user engagement.
In understanding these new media metrics, one would expect the large video game companies to be actively recruiting and doing their own games and interactive activities with their fans. Here is a surprising thing: They’re not.
Here is a quick countdown of some of the top video games and their brand presence on Facebook:
- Halo Reach: 132,769 fans
- World of Warcraft: 111,664 fans
- Grand Theft Auto: 22,000 fans
- Red Dead Redemption: 126,000 fans
Each of these brands easily has millions of fans in the real world. There is an obvious disconnect between reality and their online virtual presence. It’s also a surprising fact that World of Warcraft only has 100,000+ fans. This is a brand that can easily be in the millions.
There should be recruitment campaigns, demographic targeting on user interests… the list goes on and on.
What do you think? Can game brands do a better job with their online virtual presences?
(a special thanks to Social Media Examiner, for a great post on top fan pages)
Digital Marketing Strategy of Mass Effect
September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Blizzard needs to evolve in their monetization
Very few companies are now properly tracking their own in-game stats. With a lot of the daily activity that goes on in video games, there are a ton of ways that these player platforms can be monetized. When thinking of games like World of Warcraft and other MMPORGS, its a shame to see all of the $$$ that is left on the table. Be it virtual pets, auctions, or in-game activity. Leading game companies such as Zynga are taking the concept of the MMPORG to the next level – social games. At last count, Zynga now has an estimated valuation of 5 billion dollars. That’s with only 2-3 years of game development under their belts.
As of last estimated count, Blizzard has a market worth of 14 billion dollars. With a couple tweaks, they could become a 20 billion dollar company. Its all about mining the data.
Thats why I’m excited to see companies like BioWare analyzing their internal player activity. This information helps them refine the game based on user interaction and activity. This is what made Mass Effect 2 a 50% improvement over Mass Effect 1. In real time, Bioware is able to track user activity and use that data to map out their next set of games. IGN has a great article on this, and the detailed stats that are coming in from player activity. Little nuggets of data like the following can be worth millions:
Data like this helps Bioware refine in-game experiences, character classes, as well as quality of gameplay. It also means $$$$
In web marketing we have the ability to track user interaction with a website and make the appropriate adjustments to improve the user experience. Imagine if such a sensibility were applied to video games? Its encouraging to see examples like above being used. It improves the quality of the gameplay, as well as makes more $$$ for the developer. Gamer + Developer=Epic Win.