An Alexa ranking is every kid’s nightmare: a number that measures popularity. You heard me right, an Alexa ranking is a number that tells you exactly how many websites are more popular than your website. And you thought you left lunchroom dramas back in high school.

Obviously as the big wigs in the social web, Google, Facebook and Youtube take the cake as the ‘Populars’, while everyone else sits waiting and anxious for a chance to hang with the cool kids. The number is expressed in relatively big numbers and obviously, the more popular you are, the smaller Alexa you get. These number are updated often, usually daily, so with an exception of the big three, the numbers shuffle fast. You could be in with the in crowd one second, and out like moon shoes the next.

Metaphors aside, let’s get into the meat of what exactly you learn from seeking out your Alexa score. Our rank at Jacob Tyler is 283,640. That means that there are 283,639 websites out there in the world that are more popular than we are. In the US, there are only 115,318 bigger fish in the sea while in San Diego we’re moving up with a rank of 6,752. We’ve got 132 sites linking in and then we have a breakdown of demographics. According to Alexa, our audience is predominantly male, college educated, between the ages of 25 and 44 with other age groups represented and most are visiting the site from work. Most of our site traffic is from the United States and revolves around search terms pertaining to our industry: san diego web design, san diego ad agency etc. You can see pertaining search queries and in some cases, trafficking information….if you’re popular enough.

You can also compare different sites to one another and I’m proud to announce that Jacob Tyler Creative Group has the highest among the similar company sites I compared.  Other companies shall remain nameless to avoid tears.

You can also see where the traffic is coming from by clicking the Clickstream tab. For us, the top two referring sites are Google and Facebook and let it be known that Social Media Marketing has a HUGE impact on this score – so don’t miss the boat on the Social Media Revolution.

That, in a nut shell, is what the Alexa ranking can offer you so I encourage everyone to take a look at yours  and work on making that journey toward the top.

By Nicole Fletcher
I’m not totally in the holiday spirit and I’ve been kind of upset about it. It’s December 15th and I’ve yet to bake a cookie, set foot in a mall or drink a warm alcoholic beverage. I’ve been busy and excitedly working on a million things not related to the Christmas season…and then I came across this. This video demonstrates perfectly the synergy between my work and my holiday spirit, or lack thereof. My world is consumed by social media and I love it, but it took this video to put the twinkle in my tweets and the flurry in my facebook updates. In honor of the holiday season, I’d like to share this video with you. Sit back, relax and enjoy the story of Christmas with a fabulously modern media spin.

By Nicole Fletcher

According to Wikipedia, I am a member of Generation Y, otherwise known as the Millenial Generation. I’ve always been fairly fond of this categorization but in doing more research I found that my co gen-y-ers range in birth date from the mid 70s to the early 2000s. I was shocked. How could someone pushing 40 and someone who has yet to hit double digits share the same generational categorization? The Spice Girls sang ‘Generation X’ in the 90s, my 30 year old cousin doesn’t have a Facebook account and my 10 year old cousin blogs regularly. No matter what way the cookie crumbles – there’s just no way to categorize nearly a half century of people into one kitschy word.

In a recent Mashable article, author Nick Parish discussed three things brands must do to appeal to millenials online. Millenials want what they want, when they want it. Whether that’s the latest deal on Groupon, cell reception. a new song or reliable 3g, we are the instant gratification generation. In the article, Nick talks about how brands have to be on this because, simply put, if one store isn’t, there are 1000s+more that are ready and willing to snatch that business. The focus has clearly changed from the convenience and location (think the 24 hour 7-11 store) value of yesteryear, to getting what you want exactly when you want it.

Glen Parker, research director at Universal McCann, performed a study on over 350,000 consumers. They found that, “Most (brands) inherently aren’t social, but users are expecting to see them in the same places [the users] are in. For all customers, the one thing they all want is good service, but in all other aspects they are completely different.”

This boys and girls puts us in a bit of a pickle doesn’t it? What they’re saying is this: consumers supersede generational boundaries when it comes to brand presence being where they are, but since they is everyone, then they are everywhere. What that means for us dear brands, marketers, etc, is that we have to be everywhere.

What I recommend is this: really and truly analyze your target market. Where/who does your ROI come from? Are they Baby Boomers, Millenials or are they somewhere in between? Then find out where those people congregate. Is it online? If so, where? Facebook, blogs, forums, Twitter? Find them and reach out, or seek the assistance of a brand communications agency if you aren’t sure how. Ask your community what they want from you, engage with them and eventually, after this relationship builds and grows, they’ll be there waiting as loyal brand advocates. If your market is offline (ie: an older clientele), be wary that the young people of today will eventually be your market that both digital branding and social media will surely be part of your company’s future, whether you’re willing to accept it or not.

As for me and the rest of the marketers out there, a simple lesson lies at the root of this complicated message: complacency killed the cat. So refuse comfort, never settle and don’t give up on being creative, innovative and fresh in this ever evolving, wide world of web we’ve woven.

And quite nicely I may add. We thought this one was worth sharing. Enjoy.

Dilbert discusses the truth and secrets of successful marketing