TRS Technology Group Inc

Whos Using Facebook for Marketing & for How Much?

stickner — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:13:24 +0000

I've done quite a bit of marketing on Facebook and while the cost per click (CPC) has sometimes been pretty good (i.e. affordable) I've also found the cost to be quite high, sometimes approaching the price of Google depending on the market.

I've only ever run traffic to landing pages outside of Facebook and I believe this to be one of the reasons the CPC has been higher.

Here's an interesting graphic from FlowTown showing some Facebook stats for your viewing pleasure. Just click on the image to see the full view…

Go here to find out more about FlowTown

http://www.flowtown.com/blog/

Is Search Engine Optimization for Suckers?

stickner — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 18:20:26 +0000

Its no secret that I've said before that SEO is dead.

Well, it's still a massive industry and companies pay SEOs big bucks to try and push their websites onto the first page of Google.

The fact that it's not worth doing unless you're in the #1 – #3 spot is not talked about at client meetings; nor is the fact that there is no point in starting to do SEO until you know what keywords work for your business and the best, quickest, cheapest way to do this is buy traffic…

Here are some great resources from Aaron Walls SEOBook website that, if you can be bothered to take a look, will explain some of the nuances of working with the Google 'smoke and mirrors machine'.

A Look at How Organic Links Have Lost Value

Over the years Google has moved to "fight spam" at the same time Google's business development team has pushed to "make spam." The combination of those 2 (& pulling in additional non-link relevancy signals) has lowered the value of organic links.

Make sure you check out all the graphics at

http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/infographics/

iPad Killer?

stickner — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:38:53 +0000

Tablets in all shapes, sizes and price ranges will greet shoppers this holiday season. The iPad currently reigns supreme, but can a more moderately priced, smaller device like the Kindle Fire win over gift-buying consumers?

Absolutely, says consumer electronics review site Retrevo.

The company polled 1,000 people in October on their tablet-buying intentions and found that, of those planning to buy a tablet, 44 percent would consider purchasing the $199 Kindle Fire instead of the iPad 2, which starts at $499. Then again, the same percentage of folks said that they didn’t know enough about the Fire, and 12 percent indicated that they would only buy an iPad.

I'm an original version 1 Kindle early adopter and I have loved it from day one! Even with it's flaws, which are aplenty…

I said when I bought it that it was a game changer. For me and Amazon.

I paid about $350 for it and it came with whispernet; which has worked flawlessly for me since day one. I love this because I can sit on Siesta Key beach reviewing books I'm interested in and downloading samples to check out. Then I can purchase and download the book I want right there; read it for a while and then go jump in the Gulf and cool down.

Aside from being able to buy books on the go and of course carry them all around with me in a small package, there is another less know feature of Kindle that I use regularly and has actually saved me a ton of money.

You see, I'm always doing research online and downloading a ton of content, usually pdfs that I would print out to read later; funny thing is I do not like to sit and read articles or books online. I read what I have to but I much prefer to take information away from the computer in printed form to read. I think a lot of people do.

And I was spending a ton of money on printer toner to do this.

Well along came Kindle and a neat software program called MobiPocket Creator; it can take a pdf or other types of document and package them up to go right on the Kindle and boy how I have used that over the years. Its probably saved me hundreds of dollars in toner!

As for the Kindle Fire; I looked at it and wondered; waited for reviews and opinions to surface. Kindle Fire has got a 4 star rating on Amazon at this time and a lot of mixed reviews. Having been an early adopter of Kindle 1, which was a technological marvel but a pain in the arse to hold , I think I'm going to wait until Amazon upgrade the software and features.

Some good things to note about Kindle Fire from my perspective;

It's running Android – I've already gone Android, don't fight it…
Amazon are a fantastic company – what they have done in the cloud is far superior to anyone and boggles the mind; really!
Plugs into Amazon content
Its not an iPad

Unfortunately the Kindle Fire does not appear to have all the features of a Kindle; probably because it's not actually a new Kindle. So you can't really buy it as a Kindle upgrade. It's a tablet.

Do I need a tablet?

To be honest I don't know what all the fuss is about tablets and particularly the iPad. I've got a Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, which is a real computer and it's tiny, so I'll stick with that thank you very much and upgrade to a touch screen version sometime in the future.

I don't care for Apple too much; I own an iPod Touch which I like but the iTunes software sucks so bad I would gladly switch if there was a better hardware option available. It amazes me that Apple can produce such fantastic hardware and hobble it with such a crappy piece of software.

Amazon Kindle – eReader eXtraordinaire

Google Mobile Ad Sales Currently Seeing a $2.5B Run Rate for 2011

stickner — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:43:59 +0000

During his first ever keynote address at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow (02/16/2010), Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that more of his company's focus is now on smartphones than on desktops. He summed this up with a new motto: "Mobile First".

During the company’s Q3 earnings call recently, Google said it’s on track to bank over $2.5B from mobile advertising in 2011, which is more than double than the $1B the company recorded in 2010.

While $2.5B seems relatively low compared to the $30B+ in total revenue the search giant is on track to post this year, but the growth rate is what’s impressive.

Most of Google’s revenue comes from desktop search, and the company has been banking on translating that success to the mobile channel. The problem, however, is that mobile search — and thereby mobile ads — are vastly different than desktop search.

When people search using their mobile devices, they’re most likely looking for something specific and then cease searching once they find what they’re looking for. By contrast, people searching via desktop are much more likely to make other, more exploratory searches. The experience is just too different between the two. This doesn’t mean that Google won’t be extraordinary successful at mobile ads, it just means their ad-units and placements will have be that much more engaging and unique.

Here's more from big G in 2011.

They are obviously serious about mobile sine the bought Motorola for $12.5 billion.

Google: Mobile First

Search Marketing $14.9 Billion in Revenues First 6 Months 2011

stickner — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:22:46 +0000

Search marketing advertising still remains the leader with 49% of revenues, up 2% from last year, followed by display (banners) at 23%, the same as last year.

That $14.9 billion spent by U.S. Internet advertisers during the first six months of this year represents a 23.2 percent year-over-year increase, eclipsing last year’s first-half record of $12.1 billion in revenue, according to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report from IAB.

A whopping 23.2 percent increase over last year! Even though Google is still dominating the search market, there are many competitors to Google's display advertising service, with new companies starting all the time. Not only new companies offering display but exchanges that offer the ability to tap into the bigger search marketing display advertising platforms, where you would normally have to start with a $5k or $10k minimum media buy.

All of which show me pretty clearly that online advertising is where its at, where it's going and where you've got to be.

Search marketing and advertising resources

Here's Eric Schmidt giving some interesting stats and ideas about search marketing and display advertising earlier this year;

Eric Schmidt Delivers the opening keynote at the 2011 IAB Annual Leadership Meeting

Eric Schmidt, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Google, shares his vision for technology, mobile, search marketing and advertising, the world and beyond.

Source

Search Marketing

What is Search Marketing? – definition

Top 7 Social Engagement Plugins for WordPress

powerpromoter — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:11:57 +0000

I build all of my websites and those of my customers on the WordPress platform. One of the features of WordPress that makes it so astonishingly great is plugins!

It's probably true to say that without plugins WordPress would have died. Glad it didn't, as there are new and ever powerful plugins coming out all the time and a lot of them help us with internet marketing and traffic, automating the mundane chores that suck countless hours from days.

There are numerous ways you can cultivate an active community around your blog that goes way beyond simple traffic generation.

After all, who wants the kind of traffic that comes and leaves to never come back, right?

Our ultimate goal should always be to make sure that our blog is sticky enough to turn the first-time visitors into fans and loyal readers and that’s what I’d like to talk about today – how to get them to stay, read our fabulous content, and share it with others.

I get asked on a daily basis what all those fabulous social engagement plugins I use on Traffic Generation Cafe are.

All the plugins we will be talking about today have been designed with one goal in mind: to keep your readers interested and to get them to share your content within their social networks.

I suppose that’s two goals then…

Here's a quick video from Yaro Starak where he talks about blog design and how important it is; I couldn't agree more with him on this;

Does Blog Design Matter? – Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

In this post, professional blogger Yaro Starak discusses whether blog design really matters.

==> Read all about the plugins on Yaro Staraks main blog Entrepreneurs-Journey

No related posts.

Facebook Advertising Costs on Average About $2.30 Per Thousand Impressions?

stickner — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:07:02 +0000

Back in May comScore reported that Facebook served about 346,000,000,000 ads in the first quarter of 2011.

Facebook is so large that it now accounts for about one out of every three ad impressions in the U.S., according to the latest statistics from comScore Ad Metrix. In the first quarter of 2011, comScore estimates that 1.1 trillion ads were served to U.S. Internet users, and 346 billion of those (or 31 percent) were on Facebook. This percentage is up from 23 percent in the third quarter of last year.

Recently another report estimating earnings has been put forth;

Facebook now accounts for one out of three ad impressions in the U.S., and that, really, no other web property in the U.S. comes close (Yahoo was second with 10 percent). That means that Facebook served approximately 340 billion ads in the first quarter. It’s probably not a surprise, then, that advertising makes up for about 89 percent of the social network’s total revenues, which are estimated at about $1.6 billion for the first six months of 2011.

So based on those numbers, which I find hard to comprehend, Facebook revenue in 1 quarter was roughly $800,000,000 (half of 1.6 billion). And 800 million dollars divided 346 billion impressions is 0.0023 cents per impression or $2.30 per thousand impressions or CPM?

You don't have to buy advertising on Facebook by CPM, in fact, most savvy advertisers start off paying per click and then move to CPM when their ads are performing well.

I know you can theoretically get 1 cent click on Facebook, but in recent experiences with their advertising platform I have seen click prices soar to Google levels!

Not unusual to start with a bid estimate of 3,4 even 5 bucks a click.

Sure those prices will come down if you get a reasonable click through rate (CTR), but even then you'll still be paying 60, 70 cents a click, which as far as I'm aware is now good

Are we going to see ad revenues surge into the trillions in the second half of 2011? Is my math off? Have I gone insane?

Here's a lady with a very nice voice explaining some basic about the Facebook advertising platform…

How Advertising Works on Facebook

Ever wonder why you see certain ads on Facebook? This video explains how our ad system works to show you relevant ads without sharing any of your personal information with advertisers.

==> Original article on techcrunch

==> Latest article on the crunchy thing

Facebook and SPAM – The size of it!

stickner — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:07:01 +0000

I read somewhere recently that Facebook has got over 750 Million, that's 750,000,000 members and growing fast (as every business owner jumps on the bandwagon for cheap traffic and instant buyer riches…).

An article on the Huffington Post recently about Facebooks automated system for dealing with (or trying to at least) deal with spam was very interesting. Not because it automatically dealt with what it thought was spam, incorrectly in this instance. No we've had automatic spam removal for years with email filters etc.

What's caught my attention was;

"Our systems classify over 10 billion actions (suspicious logins, friend requests, etc.) and pieces of content (messages, Wall posts, etc.) every day," Noyes said. "Of course, no system is perfect, and we do sometimes make mistakes."

Ten billion actions a day! That's 10,000,000,000! We're talking bailout numbers here!

Seriously though, have you noticed how a lot of websites these days never seem tocompletely download?

I mean, you follow a link and land on the page, but the downloading icon keeps twirling; the status bar continues to show; connecting to Facebook…

With everybody plugin Facebook widgets, Facebook comments and Facebook like buttons on their blogs and websites it's no wonder!

I wonder if every widget, comment and like button connect on the internet is part of the 10 Billion transactions? Or is that just on Facebook.com? Nah, can't be can it?

WARNING: Before playing the video below you might want to turn down your speakers as the creator of the video is obviously deaf (no wonder!).

The Social Media Revolution – August 2011 Summery (by VSENSE)

www.facebook.com | www.facebook.com Hey guys, we've made a summery video of the social media revolution, which include data & statistics about the usage of the major social media sites worldwide. The data was collected from press data & press-sheets …

==> Original HuffPost article here:

Intrusive Online Marketing Practices – I Don’t Get It?

stickner — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 03:11:48 +0000

Lots of news recently about the feds getting all bent out of shape;

WASHINGTON — The federal government has put Google, Microsoft, Apple and other technology companies on notice: Give consumers a way to keep advertisers from tracking them on the Web – or face regulation.

Absurd paranoia?

Washington's call to arms is a response to growing concern that invasive Internet marketing practices are eroding privacy online as every consumer move is observed, analyzed and harvested for profit.

I'm not sure if this is coming up because of advances in what is called "re-targeting' technology, my guess would be that's it.

What re-targeting does is allows you to show your ad specifically to a person who has happened upon it once online; so it does seem a little bit eerie sometimes when you start seeing the same ads popup everywhere you go…

And yes it does use a cookie on the visitors computer.

But there's no harvesting of information from a users computer.

Sure you can get an idea of where a user may have been online,but server logs track all that info anyway.

Has no-one noticed the intrusive faxes, phone calls (I get them and I'm on the Do Not Call list) and all that bloody junk mail that fills up your mail slot at the post office.

If you want to get really paranoid you should get a subscription to the SRDS and see how much information is stored about you on mailing lists that are available for sale to any old tom, dick or harry with cash…

Plus, do you have a mobile phone?

That's a bloody beacon of light shining right on you every minute of every day, doesn't matter whether you have gps turned on or not.

Someone told me a while ago there's no such thing as privacy anymore and to think otherwise is foolish.

I'm inclined to agree with him.

You should see what Eric Schmidt had to say about privacy recently; it didn't go down to well, but he's right!

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on privacy

www.theytoldyou.com "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC

==> See the full article here

Online Remote Backup

Small Business Owners Using Facebook & LinkedIn

stickner — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:49:23 +0000

US Bank Small Business Annual survey, released June 22 shows how business folk are using social media websites for marketing.

Specifically Facebook and linked in followed by industry specific sites… hmmm

I wonder what the business folk polled mean when they say utilizing social media? Do you think its maybe the same as utilizing email?

Doing busy work?

Of the respondents who use social media in their businesses, nearly three-quarters said they utilize Facebook, followed by LinkedIn (57 percent), industry-specific communities (26 percent) and Twitter (23 percent).

==> Interesting stats can be found here

Here's an interesting video from the man who invented Simpleology, which saved my bacon severl years ago with simple time management and organizational strategies to get shit done!

How to Be More Productive in Your Business – with Mark Joyner

In this video interview, Internet pioneer Mark Joyner explains some simple time management tips that can help businesspeople become much more productive during their day. There are so many distractions, says Joyner, especially from the Internet — e-…