Join Mike and Katina as they talk about the latest trends in Interactive Marketing. From Google to Facebook and back again, the team covers topics such as behavioral targeting and moms using the internet as their primary purchasing platform.

 

 LeapCast - LFI Trends: 8.29.07 - Interactive Trends: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’re seeing a lot of client interest in developing mini-sites lately, so I thought we could touch on a few things that we’ve learned can make the most of a mini-site.

Keep it timely.  Mini-sites work best for limited time promotions, such as short-term sales events, contests or sweepstakes.

Keep it short.  It’s called a mini-site for a reason–don’t give in to the temptation to try and fit “one more thing in.”  A main landing page, a page for the legal stuff (terms and conditions, privacy policy, etc.), a form page so that folks can either enter the promotion or contact you about it, and perhaps one more page for detailed information or for “follow up” information (for example, a gallery of submissions for a photography contest or a page that lists the winners of a sweepstakes.

Show the way home.  Don’t forget to include a way to get to your main site, and make sure it’s visually clear.

Pump it up.  A mini-site can have great viral potential.  Be sure to promote it in any social media marketing you participate in.

Be as engaging after the click as before.  Pay attention to the “ancilliary creative,” the submittal success page and any transactional emails.  Don’t abandon the user once he or she has converted with a generic, uninspired “Thanks for your submission” page or email.

Mini-sites can be a great way to expand your online marketing presence for big awareness pushes, without the need to redesign or significantly alter your main corporate site.  When well-executed, they can be fast, fun and effective interactive marketing.

I recently received an invitation to beta test the new social bookmarking app RSS feedreader, Streamy, thanks to Mashable.com (thanks, Pete!) I’ve been taking it for a test drive this morning, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Do you like the sweet Ajax user interface of Ma.gnolia, but not the slightly girly design? Then you’ll like Streamy.

The interface is beautifully slick and clean, and it has truly excellent usability. The “Start” page is the typical social bookmarking “most popular” list, which appears to be personalized (possibly based on your expressed interests, or possibly based on the subscriptions you’ve chosen). The next navigation link takes you to your subscriptions–and this is by far the slickest and most fun to use feed-reader I’ve seen so far.

You can browse for subscriptions by most popular, by topic, or you can enter your favorite feeds manually. Of course, when I say “manually” you might be cringing, imagining yourself dealing with some clunky form page. Au contraire, mon frere. The Ajax pop-up is clean and simple, a joy to use, pretty much (unless you subscribe to a few dozen feeds–I didn’t notice a place to import your feeds from another feedreader.) After your subscriptions are all in, your subscription page lists post excerpts in date order. You’ve also got a sidebar that lists your subscriptions individually–so if you want to only look at one particular feed at a time, it’s simple to do so.

Clicking on the title of a post excerpt opens the full post in another nifty Ajax pop-up. There’s also a “launch” button if you want to launch that particular site in a new window or tab. You can comment on posts internally within Streamy, which other Streamy users who are logged in and looking at that story can read–but it doesn’t appear to post those comments outside of Streamy on the originating site.

Of course, because it’s a very web 2.0 site, you can join networks, groups, and add friends. Wouldn’t be much of a social bookmarking site without that. You also have the obligatory profile page, chat, and IM functionality. Drag ‘n Drop sharing of stories and other media is a nice interesting touch. You can even drag another user into an IM window to create an instant chat room (although the metaphorical implications of literally dragging a friend into a chat room are more than I want to contemplate at the moment. It reminds me vaguely of being dragged into a nightclub to socialize when I really wanted to get some sleep. Ah, well.)
On the whole, I think Streamy is an incredibly well-made and well-thought-out application. Kudos to the gang at Streamy for building a great tool. If you can finagle an invite to join the beta, I highly recommend it.

Think SEO ends with site optimization?  Think again.  Join Mike and Kat as they explore the importance of off-site SEO activities, talk a little about the socially-conscious consumer, and the growth of social networking among business marketers.

 

 LeapCast - LFI University: 8.13.07 - The Beauty of Off-site SEO: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Much emphasis is placed on proper on-site optimization when discussing search engine optimization. While on-site optimization is important in ensuring that your company site maximizes the indexing and ranking that occurs when a search engine spider crawls your pages, a well-rounded and complete SEO plan should also include off-site efforts to increase page rank and relevance for your corporate site.

The simplest and most obvious of these efforts is to submit online press releases, or media releases, through outlets such as pr.com, prweb.com and prnewswire.com. A well-written and genuinely newsworthy media release can increase your relevance when it includes inbound links to your site. While most of these online outlets have a free service available, using the paid submittal service will ensure better positioning and can result in your release being picked up by other news organizations and aggregators, increasing the SEO value.

Another effective offsite activity is social media marketing. Getting involved in online conversations through blogs, social networking platforms, and discussion forums is a great way to not only create buzz for your organization, it can also increase your page ranks when appropriate inbound links are used.

However, it’s important to make sure that the person tasked with your offsite public relations and social media marketing is well-versed in both your brand and online etiquette. Even a CEO can make serious missteps that negatively reflect on your company. A perfect example would be the recent scandal involving Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who was discovered anonymously posting derogatory comments about a competitor in online forums and blogs.

When it comes to offline SEO activity, what you say, when you say it and where you say it are all of critical importance.