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.

When it comes to interactive marketing, where everyone is constantly scanning for the next big thing, there’s big potential everywhere, but in the words of Jerry Maguire, it’s like popcorn in the pan: some pop, some don’t. So lets take a look at some recent properties that had strong buzz in the last year, but didn’t quite hit those high expectations.

1. Second Life. Yes, you can argue that certain specific brands were able to effectively leverage a presence in Second Life for some significant ROI, but on the whole, the platform hasn’t yet lived up to the hype it received in its early days.

Why not? Because the vast majority of consumers are overtaxed trying to keep up with their first life, much less a digital second one.

2. Myspace. As with Second Life, some industries (the music industry in particular) have had great success with Myspace as a marketing platform. But other industries are rapidly losing interest in favor of its collegiate cousin, Facebook and its inviting open API.

Why not? Because most brands lack the understanding and willingness to commit time and resources to effective social network marketing. And it’s just not a great fit for every company.

3. Ask.com. This time last year, industry insider buzz was pointing to Ask.com as a hot contender to seriously challenge Google in search. A year later, Ask has yet to make a serious dent in Google’s search dominance.

Why not? It may be that Ask waited too long. Improved results and a snazzier algorithm isn’t enough to take on Google, now that their acquisitions take them far beyond search.

4. YouTube. When Google made its historic purchase of the video portal, speculation ran wild that online video was going to completely take over interactive marketing. While video continues to grow, the pace has been decidedly slower than some expected.

Why not? The head geeks at Google are still wrapping their prodigious minds around both the copyright implications of YouTube and developing a workable revenue model. YouTube will probably live up to the buzz eventually, but the industry may have expected too much, too soon.

5. Mobile. Technological innovations that enable marketers to advertise across networks has created tremendous interest in mobile and SMS marketing in the last year, but so far advertisers have been slow to test the waters.

Why not? Considering the wide penetration cell phones and other mobile devices have, this one is probably more a matter of time than anything else. Once an effective infrastructure is in place and some key industry leaders emerge, mobile truly could be the next big thing.

Well, the news is out.  LeapFrog Interactive has opened a new office in Boston. 

After many months of hard work, by an amazing Team that I cannot say enough good things about, I am pleased to announce the opening of the Boston office of LeapFrog Interactive!  We are opening this office to better serve our clients located in the Northeast corridor.  We will initially support business development and client services from that location.

Liz Hill (lhill@leapfroginteractive.com), VP Business Development, is a Boston native who has come on board to help us launch and run the office.  She has a deep background in interactive agency services and has worked in Boston and New York for most of her professional career.

The Boston location also puts us closer to a number of global online media providers.  This is becoming increasingly important as we offer an ever-greater mix of online media buying and social media marketing services.

Regardless of location, our focus will remain adding value to our clients’ business, whom we would like to thank for their continued support.  We highly value and appreciate it.