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CEO Jay Berkowitz,
founder of TenGoldenRules.com, a
Boca Raton online marketing firm,
quoted in Sun-Sentinel regarding
succesfull website traffic, using
user-generated content, blogging,
and strong internet marketing. "Powerful
links help drive the search engines,"
he said |
Video makes mark
in online mix
Published August 21, 2006
Move over, words. Make way for video.
Streaming video is leading the latest
push to grab more traffic and "eyeballs"
on the Internet. Earlier this month,
Google announced a deal to distribute
on the Web video content from Viacom
Inc.'s MTV Networks. TV personality
Bill Maher is appearing on Amazon.com
screens in "Amazon Fishbowl."
The adoption of online video reflects
several trends afoot. One is the increasing
adoption of broadband Internet services,
like DSL and cable modems, into the
home soaring 40 percent from March 2005
to March 2006, according to The Pew
Internet and American Life Project.
Another factor is the simplicity of
videography in the nonprofessional setting.
With Web cams and even cell phones with
video capabilities, professionally produced
video images and amateur, blog-like
content are finding a place on the Web.
Then there's YouTube. The online video
service allows individuals, from grandfathers
to independent cinematographers, to
post their own videos and clips to the
Web. Like MySpace.com before it, YouTube
has stormed the Internet. Last August,
the site had 58,000 unique visitors.
It topped 12.8 million in July, according
to Nielsen/NetRatings.
Add to the mix blogging and other content
development applications, and small
businesses have strong marketing and
self-promotion possibilities, said Jay
Berkowitz, founder of TenGoldenRules.com,
a Boca Raton online marketing firm.
Central to many of these efforts are
the community-building applications,
he said. Forums, question-and-answer
areas, and comments posted to corporate
or business blogs create cohesion among
user groups -- and make them return
in the future, he said.
Take news aggregation site Digg.com,
which like YouTube and MySpace before
it is fast becoming a standard among
"Web 2.0" companies that post
user-generated content, Berkowitz said.
Content can be created on the sites,
tagged as "favorites" using
the collaborative site Del.icio.us,
or voted on by visitors, yielding another
link on the Internet back to the user's
own Web site, he said.
Success online is all about creating
more links back to your own Web site,
he said.
"Powerful links help drive the
search engines," he said. "All
this is about creating links to your
site."
Well-crafted editorial, updated frequently
with appropriate language specific to
a marketer's industry, will help drive
future Web traffic. For Web marketers,
success is about driving traffic to
Web sites and posting content to lure
those masses, said Owen Frager, a Boca
Raton Internet entrepreneur.
Frager noted that a message to his
blog (http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com)
drew site visits from almost 400 individuals
in the past week. Tracking their origins,
Frager saw that many came from telecommunications
firms like Alcatel, Alltel, Time Warner
Telecom, Quest, Level 3, T-Mobile and
BlackBerry, among others.
Why the telecom traffic? It wasn't
from the ISPs one normally associates
with those names, but from their own
corporate HQs. Frager had blogged on
a new service that tracks wireless hot
spots. Google's search bots scoured
his site, found the mention, which,
like dominos, triggered a chain reaction;
a viral pass-along to other blogs, search
engines and "RSS e-mail alerts"
to people who subscribe to follow topics
whenever and wherever they are written
about online.
"That linkage brought [these executives]
directly to my door," he wrote.
"You gotta learn about this kind
of new marketing. Why go to them when
you can use Google to get them in to
you?"
Frager's own Frager Ventures, which
owns more than 30 unique Web sites,
has seen a spike in traffic resulting
from savvy online marketing efforts.
His sites, ShoeDepartment.com and ChestPains.com,
are advertising-driven sites tied in
with advertising placement, listing
and affiliate services. Most of the
ads posted are pay-per-click listings
generated by several different online
advertising services. As a result, Frager's
sites were visited by almost 1,000 people
in one day or 33,000 unique visitors
over a few weeks, with a good share
of the traffic coming from outside the
United States, including Japan, Germany,
Mexico, the Netherlands, even Iran,
Yemen and Pakistan.
"That means the cash register
doesn't stop on California time,"
he said. "When I read that Google
is having a record quarter, I know I'm
going to have a record quarter and we've
been consistently breaking records month
after month."
Several factors like Google, streaming
video content and residential broadband
are converging to make a "perfect
storm" for Internet marketers much
faster than expected, he said.
"Now, commercials aren't appearing
on Bill Maher," Frager wrote in
his blog. "Bill Maher is appearing
on Amazon as the entertainment break
to your shopping."
Jeff Zbar is a freelance writer. Reach
him at jeff@jeffzbar.com.
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