Top Blog Posts in First Three Years of WMC

It's been three years since the launch of this blog, and it still gets less traffic than the Huffington Compost (sigh). Maybe I should set my goals a bit more modestly? Oh well, at least I write my own stuff.

Anyway, taking a look back at the first three years of the WMC blog, here are the ten most popular posts as chosen by you, my elite (in the good sense!) and loyal readers. It's an interesting mix of old and new, tactical and strategic, original and derivative.

10. Best of 2007: Blog Posts on Social Media Marketing, January 18, 2008—A wrap-up of some of the best blog posts of 2007 on social networking and social media marketing strategies and tactics.

9. Web 2.0 Social Tagging Sites, Part 1: Alexa Rankings, April 29, 2007—the Alexa rankings for 42 popular Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites, with Alexa's lack of precision and measurement shortcomings duly noted.

8. Best of 2007: SEO Analysis Tools, January 9, 2008—the very first post in the "Best of 2007" series, providing a list of the best tools for analyzing and optimizing SEO efforts as well as blog posts on SEO tools from sources like SEO Position (now SocialSEO), SEO Company and Web Worker Daily.

7. How to Write a Strategic Marketing Plan, December 6, 2007—my take on how to write a strategic marketing plan, written after several Google searches revealed little of value on this rather important topic.

6. Best of 2007: Website Design, February 4, 2008—links to some of the best articles and blog posts from 2007 on website design considerations to consider from the outset, such as intuitive navigation, relevant visitor-focused content, and SEO.

5. Web 2.0 Social Tagging Sites, Part 4: B2B Traffic Building, May 15, 2007—my attempt to provide a quantitative answer to the question of whether, and how much, tagging content on social bookmarking sites helps drive B2B web traffic.

4. Web 2.0 Social Tagging Sites, Part 7: The Best, June 26, 2007—the summary, after a 60-day test, of which Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites produced the best results, in terms of driving direct traffic and having active, engaged discussion communities.

3. Selecting an Advertising Agency, June 7, 2005—one of the first posts ever on the WMC blog, this was my take on how to select a marketing/PR agency, from the client perspective (before I moved to the agency side).

2. Google AdWords Average CTR and Best Practices, September 20, 2007—the difficulty of obtaining benchmarking data for CTR and other AdWords measurements, and 14 steps to optimize your results, regardless of what the average values actually are in your industry.

Drumroll...

1. Email Campaign, Newsletter and Banner Ad Click-Through Rates (CTR), August 14, 2007—in planning online advertising and email promotion budgets, it's critical to calculate the likely ROI upfront whenever possible, as well as to establish campaign benchmarks. Based on several studies, this post shows typical CTR ranges for email newsletter ads, email campaigns (blasts or internally-produced enewsletters), and banner ads.

There you have it, the ten posts you thought were the best so far. Thanks for your support over the first three years; onward and upward.

*****

technorati tags: best blog posts on social media marketing, Web 2.0, social bookmarking sites, SEO analysis tools, SEO Position, SocialSEO, SEO Company, Web Worker Daily, strategic marketing plan, B2B traffic building, selecting an advertising agency, Google AdWords best practices

del.icio.us tags: best blog posts on social media marketing, Web 2.0, social bookmarking sites, SEO analysis tools, SEO Position, SocialSEO, SEO Company, Web Worker Daily, strategic marketing plan, B2B traffic building, selecting an advertising agency, Google AdWords best practices

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

What Email Marketers Need to Know

Three new how-to guides recently added to WebMarketCentral offer valuable guidance to email marketing practitioners. Since I don't know everything (as if that wasn't obvious!), these have been authored by some veteran professionals in the field: Dan Forootan, president, and Neil Anuskiewicz, sales director at hosted email marketing platform provider StreamSend.

Selecting an Email Service Provider (ESP) provides a list of the top 10 criteria to consider when choosing a hosted email marketing platform for your organization. Key considerations include deliverability, reporting, list management and split testing capabilities. Price makes the list—at number 10.

Email Marketing Best Practices offers five tips to maintain high deliverability rates and avoid being perceived as a spammer. These include techniques for proper list building and maintenance, message design, list segmentation and complaint handling.

Finally, Using Google Analytics to Track Email Campaigns shows you how to use campaign management features within Google Analytics to track not only the number of visitors generated by your campaign, but also the number of pages they visited, average time on your website, percent of new visitors to your website and the average bounce rate—useful statistics that may not be provided by your email service provider. Understanding visitor behavior enables you to more effectively provide the information your buyers are seeking, keep them on your website longer, and increase conversion or purchase rates.

*****

technorati tags: email marketing how-to guides, Dan Forootan, Neil Anuskiewicz, StreamSend, Selecting an Email Service Provider, ESP, hosted email marketing platform, Email Marketing Best Practices, high deliverability rates, list building and maintenance, list segmentation, Using Google Analytics to Track Email Campaigns, campaign management, increase conversion rates

del.icio.us tags: email marketing how-to guides, Dan Forootan, Neil Anuskiewicz, StreamSend, Selecting an Email Service Provider, ESP, hosted email marketing platform, Email Marketing Best Practices, high deliverability rates, list building and maintenance, list segmentation, Using Google Analytics to Track Email Campaigns, campaign management, increase conversion rates

icerocket tags: email marketing how-to guides, Dan Forootan, Neil Anuskiewicz, StreamSend, Selecting an Email Service Provider, ESP, hosted email marketing platform, Email Marketing Best Practices, high deliverability rates, list building and maintenance, list segmentation, Using Google Analytics to Track Email Campaigns, campaign management, increase conversion rates

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Best of 2007: Amusing and Creative Marketing Stuff

Sell your soul on eBay. Buy trash at Target. "404 Error" pages that are actually entertaining. A bedtime story about search engines. A rap about link building. What's going on here?

It's the final—and best—installment of WebMarketCentral's Best of 2007 series. Here are some of the most humorous, creative, and just plain odd, yet strangely relevant to interactive marketing, blog posts and articles from 2007. I hope you have as much fun reading these as I had writing about them!

A Bedtime Story (or The Future of Search) by Alt Search Engines

The delightful story of a grandfather and his amazingly-tuned-in-to-search grandson talking about the "future" of search engines, when they will be able to show a virtually unlimited number of results on a single page (NoFoodHere), display search results as two-dimensional maps (KartOO), search within a tag cloud (Quintura), and do other cool things.


Hitchhikers Guide to Linkless SEO by SEOish

How to improve your Google PageRank, create link bait, use social media optimization, and other SEO advice presented as Douglas Adams would have written it, if he were an SEO guy. A must-read for fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide who also need to drive web traffic.


404 Pages - Funny, Geeky, Disturbing by Squareoak

404 error pages don't have to bland. Here are a collection of some of the most creative and imaginative ways to tell site visitors they've mistyped a URL or reached a page that no longer exists on your site. Want even more interesting ideas for your 404 error page? Smashing Magazine provides an extended collection.


The GoogleBalt's Great American Road Trip: Five Street-View Optimization Tips by MediaPost Search Insider

With Google driving the country gathering scenes for its Street View maps, Rob Garner outlines five things you may want to do (e.g., dress for success, keep your blinds closed) and not do (grow pot on your windowsill) lest the Googlebalt's cameras snap you.


Does Sex Sell? by The Origin of Brands Blog

Sure it does, says best-selling author Laura Ries in this entertaining and insightful blog post, for products like " perfume, condoms or erectile dysfunction drugs," but...hamburgers?!


Behind the Scenes of Branding by Marketing Genius from Maple Creative

Skip Lineberg provides a rare glimpse inside the branding discussions at a major advertising agency, as the assembled marketing team works through crucial concepts such as a product's Brandapalooza Index and Brangelina Factor.


The 6 Most Overhyped Technologies by Cracked

Writer Chris Bucholz reviews six technologies that some people decided were so cool they had to be developed and hyped without wasting time on silly things like market research, including eBooks and the Internet on your TV.


Funny Adwords Contest: Round 2 by Google Analytics Blog

Mark Curtis supplies a very funny yet cautionary post on the dangers of using variable keyword insertion in Google and Yahoo SEM ads.


Link Rap w/da Moserious by The Link Spiel

No one is sure why we really needed this, but Moserious does a rap here about link building. So bad it's actually kind of good.


The complete Best of 2007 series:

Best of 2007: SEO Analysis Tools
Best of 2007: SEO Keyword Research Tools
Best of 2007: News Articles on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Blog Posts on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on Google AdWords
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 1)
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 2)
Best of 2007: Website Design
Best of 2007: Blogging for Business
Best of 2007: Marketing Research
Best of 2007: Interactive PR
Best of 2007: SEO Copywriting
Best of 2007: Strategy and Branding
Best of 2007: Web Analytics
Best of 2007: Web 2.0 Sites
Best of 2007: Cool Online Tools
Best of 2007: Miscellaneous Marketing Stuff
Best of 2007: Amusing and Creative Marketing Stuff

*****

technorati tags: funny AdWords contest, clever 404 Error, link bulding rap, NoFoodHere, KartOO, Quintura, SEOish, Squareoak, GoogleBalt, Rob Garner, Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries, Marketing Genius from Maple Creative, Skip Lineberg, Brandapalooza Index, Brangelina Factor, Cracked, Chris Bucholz, Google Analytics Blog, link rap, Mark Curtis, Moserious, The Link Spiel

del.icio.us tags: funny AdWords contest, clever 404 Error, link bulding rap, NoFoodHere, KartOO, Quintura, SEOish, Squareoak, GoogleBalt, Rob Garner, Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries, Marketing Genius from Maple Creative, Skip Lineberg, Brandapalooza Index, Brangelina Factor, Cracked, Chris Bucholz, Google Analytics Blog, link rap, Mark Curtis, Moserious, The Link Spiel

icerocket tags: funny AdWords contest, clever 404 Error, link bulding rap, NoFoodHere, KartOO, Quintura, SEOish, Squareoak, GoogleBalt, Rob Garner, Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries, Marketing Genius from Maple Creative, Skip Lineberg, Brandapalooza Index, Brangelina Factor, Cracked, Chris Bucholz, Google Analytics Blog, link rap, Mark Curtis, Moserious, The Link Spiel

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

New on WMC: Marketing Webcasts and Videos

WebMarketCentral, the portal site with resources for interactive marketing professionals, continues to expand with the recent addition of marketing, sales and CRM-focused webcasts and videos powered by Insight24. This is the place to see the latest expert rich media presentations from sources like Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies; the Business Intelligence Network; HubSpot; Microsoft; Entellium; and SalesRoundup. It's a one-stop page for marketing-focused intelligence from market leaders.

A valuable resource for sales and marketing practitioners, the new webcasts and videos page is likely to join the web's most comprehensive marketing events calendar, directory of advertising and marketing trade publications, and Marketing, Advertising and Sales Career Opportunities as one of the most-visited pages on the site.

Looking for engaging content from leading sales and marketing experts? Check out the new Webcasts and Videos page on WebMarketCentral.

*****

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

New on WebMarketCentral: Marketing Careers and Events

Two new sections have recently been added to the fastest-growing web marketing portal—a Marketing and Sales Career Opportunities section, powered by CareerBuilder, and an extensive calendar of Marketing Events.

The Career Opportunities area enables you to search for jobs by category, including Advertising, Public Relations, Graphic Design and B2B Sales. You can refine searches by location and keyword, and access a variety of job-seeker tools. For those who are hiring rather than looking, this section also provides an array of tools for employers.

The Marketing Events calendar features marketing-related event dates and descriptions from around the world, displayed by week and frequently updated. Use this page to make sure you don't miss any important events (such as the upcoming Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas) or to promote your events.

These two new sections continue to expand the B2C and B2B marketing resources available on WebMarketCentral, including the top marketing books, web marketing news, marketing-related blogs and the web's most extensive listing of marketing and advertising-related trade publications with editorial contacts and RSS feeds.

*****

technorati tags: marketing and sales career opportunities, marketing events calendar, B2B sales, Blog World & New Media Expo, B2B marketing resources

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icerocket tags: marketing and sales career opportunities, marketing events calendar, B2B sales, Blog World & New Media Expo, B2B marketing resources

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

New on WMC: Guide to Web-Based B2B Lead Generation Programs

The web marketing plan development section on WebMarketCentral continues to expand with the recent addition of a Guide to Web-Based B2B Lead Generation Programs. An overview of online B2B lead generation tactics, this page provides an overview of the most common types of Internet advertising and online B2B lead generation programs, including:

• Search engine marketing


• Advertising on Internet ad networks


• White paper syndication


• Email marketing


• Webcasts and podcasts

The goal of all of these B2B lead generation activities is to make it easy for your prospects to find you when they are looking for a solution to a problem that your product or service provides, then guide them through the process from information-gathering to purchase. Research shows that 75-80% of B2B buyers and influencers use the Internet to find information about vendors rather than responding to outbound efforts.

Web-based lead generation programs supplement and complement offline efforts such as trade shows, direct mail and telemarketing. Online marketing is a key component of every B2B marketing and PR plan, but is particularly valuable for products and services that:

• Typically involve a single decision maker or small team;


• Are tactical rather than strategic purchases; and


• Are relatively inexpensive.

This new section expands on existing guides to SEO, blogging and interactive PR.

*****

technorati tags: web marketing plan development, b2b lead generation programs, Internet advertising, search engine marketing, ad networks, white paper syndication, email marketing, webcasts, podcasts, online marketing, b2b marketing, SEO, blogging, interactive PR

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icerocket tags: web marketing plan development, b2b lead generation programs, Internet advertising, search engine marketing, ad networks, white paper syndication, email marketing, webcasts, podcasts, online marketing, b2b marketing, SEO, blogging, interactive PR

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

It's Official: WebMarketCentral is the Fastest Growing Web Marketing Portal

Thank you to everyone who's visited WebMarketCentral.com over the past few months—you've made it the fastest-growing web marketing portal site. It's gratifying that so many online marketing professionals have found value in the web marketing resources, news, tools and guides on the site.

According to Alexa (yes, I know it's not perfect, but it does provide an accurate ballpark measure), WebMarketCentral.com is growing rapidly while other popular web marketing sites such as MarketingSherpa, ClickZ, Marketing Profs, and Web Digest for Marketers (wdfm.com) are seeing traffic declines.

























These are all fine sites, which I visit frequently and highly recommend. And, granted, they are all ranked in the top 100,000 on Alexa, and in some cases the top 10,000 (having a staff to keep site content updated certainly helps). WebMarketCentral is ranked...somewhat lower. But to paraphrase the famous Avis commercials, when you're number 545,003, you try harder.

*****

technorati tags: web marketing portal, news, resources, tools, guides, MarketingSherpa, Marketing Profs, ClickZ, web digest for marketers, wdfm.com, Avis, Alexa

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The web marketing services portal: WebMarketCentral.com

The only Minnesota marketing and SEO agency focused exclusively on B2B IT companies: KC Associates

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

Generating Word of Mouth Buzz through Interactive PR

Seana Mulcahy at MediaPost recently wrote a piece about using social media and other tools to build word-of-mouth promotion online. There are a number of online tools and methods to spread word of mouth online, but a key one is interactive PR.

In The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott writes about designing PR efforts that are actually for the public: "The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on the media. Blogs, online news releases, and other forms of Web content let organizations communicate directly with buyers...and here's something really neat: if you do a good job telling your story directly, the media will find out. And then they'll write about you!" That's online word of mouth.

So what is interactive PR exactly? The term, originated (I believe) on the Six Pillars blog,