by Jonathan Marshall

Handerpants are a real product and they only cost $12. If you are a ninja with delicate hands, a magician or just plain old- Handerpants are your answer!

These 95% cotton, 5% spandex, fingerless gloves look and feel exactly like men’s briefs. In the winter, slip them on underneath your gloves for extra warmth and protection from chafing! Wear them on their own as a borderline inappropriate fashion statement! Hundreds of uses! Fits most adult hands.

This type of video is just another example of how Social Media Marketing works in today’s user-generated content environment. This video has almost 10,000 views on Youtube, and it will help to increase traffic and generate revenue for the company. Even though it seems like a fairly low-budget, self-made spoof, it is definitely still an effective approach that creates a buzz and gets people talking about the product. Check it out!

by Jonathan Marshall

It’s that time again, and if you live in San Diego, it’s “the craziest day of the year to come downtown,” as Les said when he walked into the office. Every July, thousands of rabid fans flock to San Diego for the annual Comic-Con International festival. Enthusiasts come dressed as X-Men, Ninja Turtles, Darth Vader and just about every comic book character you can think of. The enormous Comics and Media Conference, which has evolved beyond its original focus on comic books to encompass blockbuster movies, popular TV shows, hit video games and more, is celebrating it’s 40th anniversary this summer. Although the parking situation downtown is just plain ridiculous, the people-watching definitely makes up for it. We have seen several impressive and detailed costumes excitedly skip by the office on their way to the convention center, and it’s only 10:30am.

I also just found out that Les was one of the designers for the X-Files Collectible card game that was released at GenCon in 1996. That was actually the job that brought him out to California. So he has been to the show about five times, and says it’s a lot of fun, but warns that the fans are intense.

Some friends and I are going to check out the madness on Saturday- more for documenting how ridiculous some people are than anything else, but also so we can finally say we have seen what the fuss is all about. I’m sure it will be an overwhelming display, but for a skeptical comic book outsider like myself, I can almost guarantee I won’t be able to appreciate the sheer power of the event. Wink wink, no sarcasm at all. Stay tuned for pictures from the event next week on Twitter and Facebook.

by Les Kollegian

Recently I’ve been hearing the same question come up in many conversations with clients: “When will I see results from our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plan”? My response is the same to every client, regardless of the situation. “It depends. It could take a couple weeks or a couple of months. You have to be patient.” Jacob Tyler’s SEO process is very intricate and time consuming. That being said- it works. Below is an explanation of why SEO campaigns take some time to get off the ground, and why our SEO is more ‘process’ than ‘result’.
Receiving Links Back from High Page-rank Sites is the First Step.

First things first, securing inbound links is never a speedy process. One aspect of a typical search marketing campaign will involve writing to other web directories and websites, inviting them to link to your own, which takes time. However, without this crucial step, links from other websites take MUCH longer to develop. I usually tell my clients to think of an SEO campaign as a process that speeds up what would occur naturally.

Webmaster response can also take a considerable amount of time. Even if you or your SEO consultant completed 150 requests in a day, the webmasters of those 150 other sites may not get back to you immediately. In extreme cases, it has been 10 – 12 months before I have heard back from some webmasters. So you’ll get some links quickly, and other links will take much longer.

The importance of receiving these links is that search engines count inbound links as a “vote”. Sites that have more “votes” are perceived as being stronger, in addition to having higher rankings.

Getting your Inbound Links to be Indexed

So let’s say that a few weeks have passed and you’ve secured 50 valuable inbound links from 50 great websites. Even though you’ve requested 150, you will never get every link you ask for, it just doesn’t happen. Some webmasters will never answer your request, and some simply will not link back.
So you have some links pointing to your site, now what?

Now the long and detailed process moves on to Google and Yahoo and they don’t get around to indexing those 50 pages for days or weeks. Google will generally index most sites within 3 – 4 weeks, whereas Yahoo takes longer and MSN takes much longer. As second-tier search engines like MSN improve their technology, you can expect the indexing speed to catch up. Additionally, until the search engines update their indexes of the pages that link to your site, it’s as if the link doesn’t exist.

Search engines are picky and they don’t index pages just because webmasters index them. So, if Google comes upon a web page with a link to your site, it may index that page immediately, or it may return a few times before the page is indexed. In that case, some links may take months to be indexed.

The Sites that Link to You have to wait for their Links as well

You also can’t forget that the sites that link to you are “living” websites too. The strength of their web presence is based on the links they receive – and that landscape is constantly changing. When your site is new, the sites that are willing to link to you are going to usually be new as well. As such, the inbound linking power of the sites that link to you will tend to be weaker than websites that have been around for a longer period of time. However, those sites will grow into stronger sites as they age, and then the inbound links that you have from other sites will grow as well.

The Sandbox Effect

And then, on top of everything else, there is the Sandbox Effect. The Sandbox Effect refers to the phenomenon of a temporary ranking penalty applied to newer websites that undergo rapid expansion in either inbound links or size. The Sandbox Effect is heavily debated and never conclusively proven either way.

Google spokesperson, Matt Cutts, has publicly stated, “There are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries.” Mr. Cutts’ statements are very well prepared, extremely rare and he is widely regarded as a knowledgeable, reliable source.
And so, the Sandbox Effect may serve to temporarily slow down the effects of any promotional campaign you undertake.

All of these factors combine to form the long and often frustrating process of a typical SEO campaign. Depending on your website, it can be a quick and pain-free experience, or it can be a slow and testing process. It depends. You have to be patient.

by Jonathan Marshall

Today, everyone seems to be talking about Social Media, and companies are rushing “to do” social media, much like a child in Toys R Us when they see a shiny, new toy on the shelves. Businesses are trying to figure out how to leverage it for marketing, increased and more personal customer interaction, and PR. They’re hopping on the Twitter wagon, making Facebook fan pages, uploading videos/pics to Youtube and Flickr, and building social communities in hopes of joining the Web 2.0 conversation. Jason Burby from ClickZ thoroughly explains social media advantages/disadvantages in the post below.

A few succeed, but depending on industry, many pour a lot of resources into these efforts and don’t have much success. The biggest concern is they haven’t defined what success might look like for themselves or their customers and potential prospects. This is where the problem starts. Defining specific site goals is important when initiating an on-site behavior measurement plan (Web analytics). Companies that don’t have documented and thorough site goals really struggle when it comes to prioritizing initiatives and measuring their site’s success. These shared site goals are critical to understanding your site performance’s and impact.

The same holds true when you initiate specific goals in order to understand the impact of social media on your business. You must define what success means to you, because it will be different for everyone.

Consider how you can leverage social media’s enormous reach for your business, but make sure that you understand that you can’t control social media. This is where most drop the ball if they hadn’t already with setting up specific social media goals. You can’t force your goals on people talking about your company, products, and services. When defining your goals, consider what success also means to those interacting on the Web with your brand, whether it’s on your site or not. Like I said before, success will be different for everyone, and after you understand what it may mean for your target, you could end up changing your definition of success, maybe a few times.

When it comes to defining goals and identifying ways to leverage social media, you must understand the difference between social media that you own, and social media that you don’t own. You own the social media that you promote on your site, your Facebook fan page, your Twitter account, and similar communities you or your business may use. You don’t own what other people are saying on their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, reviews on other sites, and blogs. Premiere San Diego Advertising Agencies actively use all of these social tools.

Too often, companies are only focused on understanding how people interact with the social media initiatives controlled by the company. The conversations I hear are always about how many followers/fans a Twitter account/Facebook fan page has. And while it is important to understand the reach of those owned initiatives, the power is really in the chatter. The conversations that go on between your customers, including information and opinions about your company, products, and services online. That is what is important- analyzing how you are perceived by others, and then making changes or increasing efforts accordingly.

The secret for companies is defining ways in which to harness that positive power of comments while finding the negative comments and addressing them so that they don’t spin out of control and continue to have a negative impact on your business (short term and long term).

According to Jason Burby, a well-known example of this is the buzz that went on a few years ago on the Dell laptop batteries overheating and exploding. There was a tremendous amount of talk about it online before Dell acknowledged and addressed it. It ended up becoming a huge issue leading to recalls and the like.

If Dell had been listening across the Web at that point, it may have been able to identify the issue earlier and get ahead of the problem, working with manufacturing and recalling batteries earlier. It would’ve been seen as getting ahead of the problem rather than getting nailed for ignoring it.

Dell and others have learned from mistakes like this, but many companies still aren’t proactive in listening to what their clients are saying on the Web. To shift corporate thinking in this area, put a strategic plan in place to address these types of things.

How do you define success around social media? What is your strategy to leverage the positive mentions and address the negative (or potentially negative) mentions?

Once you have that in place, you can look at the different tools and listening platforms available to understand what’s happening outside initiatives you control. Make sure you look not just at quantity of mentions but also at quality measurements. Sentiment definition is a great way to help focus on quantity versus quality. Define your goals around these areas and plan your strategy based on that.