EngineWorks, Inc.

Promoting your products and services online, especially through search engines, continues to outperform all other marketing channels in today’s economy.  Another encouraging article from eMarketer today titled ‘US Online Sales Up’ revealed tremendous results for e-commerce sales during First Quarter 2009.  As reported in a new survey from Forrester Research and Shop.org, online retail sales during the first three (3) months of this year in the US increased an average of eleven percent (+11%).

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The following statement, published today by eMarketer in an article titled “Blogging Has Come a Long Way, Baby”, delivers a direct hit pertaining to why online commercial entities need to create (and actively manage) a blog on their Web site, and aggressively participate in online social networks and community blogs:

“Blogging activity presents new opportunities for marketers to influence – and monitor – conversations that may be relevant to their businesses,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.  “These conversations will continue to happen with or without participation from marketers, but those who join in—whether through their own sites or through a brand presence on independent ones—will have a place at the table.”

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As many Web designers and developers know, HTML has been slowly evolving since it was introduced as a practical mark-up language for the Web in the early 1990’s. In fact, HTML has undergone exactly four major revisions, with the most recent revision taking place in 1997. Given that it has been more than 12 years since there has been any significant change to HTML, I read with great interest the latest post from Mike Pilgrim titled “The Road to HTML 5: Link Relations.”

Mike Pilgrim is a successful author/blogger/programmer who is currently employed by Google, Inc. His informative post sparked my interest in HTML 5, the much anticipated recommendation that is expected to be released in September 2010. Specifically, I wanted to learn more about any changes which could affect search engine optimization efforts. Good thing, I did . . . because here are several important aspects of HTML 5 which should be brought to the attention of the SEO community.

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It’s hard to miss all the attention being paid to social media lately. You have surely noticed the increase in referrals from traditional advertising points to Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, or other online networking forums. Businesses catch consumer attention through these traditional channels, however they’re now engaging and converting them through social media. Social media is fun, captivating, and certainly popular, but what is the bottom the line for businesses from all this socializing?

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In yet another encouraging article from eMarketer titled ‘Small Businesses Seek Solutions Online’, the digital marketing and media research firm today reported the results from a poll by Bredin Business Information that found that small businesses in the United States are “increasing their online activities, becoming more focused and conducting segmentation research to better target their customers”.

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This week, in a survey titled ‘2008 State of the Market‘, Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) reported that they project that the total online search marketing industry will grow almost 100% by 2013.  More than 800 respondents from search engine advertisers and search marketing agencies across the globe participated in this study that was performed by Radar Research.

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The NCAA tournament may have ended last night, but we at EngineWorks aren’t ready to move on from our busted brackets. Introducing our own ‘One Shining Moment’ for the Internet marketing community: EngineWorks has internally compiled our favorite SEM, SEO, SMM, and other industry relevant blogs to create the EngineWorks 2009 Blog Bracket. (more…)

A compelling article from MSN Money last week titled ‘Is Facebook the new Wal-Mart?’ put forth the proposition that, due to the fact that the social media Web site’s audience is skewing older and going mainstream, Facebook is now positioned to become a bona-fide ‘big box retailer’.

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Each day,  search engines seek to improve the Internet experience for millions of people by connecting them to information buried amidst billions of unwanted pages.  On the way to reaching this weighty goal, many small enhancements are made, in which a good search marketer (which is my own goal), should keep up with.

So throughout my work weeks, I rely on Twitter to scour the web for the latest and greatest information on search engine optimization, paid search marketing, social media marketing, and general search industry news.

Of all the great insights provided by some of the brightest minds in the game, I’ve decided to share my favorites. Each week, I’ll provide the articles, blog posts, and online discussions that gave me insight into the rapidly growing search engine marketing field. This week features posts pertaining to social media marketing:

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Everyone is Talking about Twitter

Twitter is gaining a lot of attention lately, for um…gaining a lot of attention. The site’s popularity even warranted a news story on CNN this week, leading to millions of social media laggards to ask two questions: ‘wait, what is Twitter?’ and the more introspective, ‘Do I need to be on Twitter?’

For businesses, the tempting answers are ‘who cares’ and ‘of course, it’s popular!’ But smart businesses will give the prospect a little more thought. Twitter is hardly a ‘magic bullet’ for every social media campaign. Consider if and how Twitter can fit into your business before you buy in to the latest fad.

Twitter for businesses

As a part of our Social Media Marketing campaigns at EngineWorks, we may recommend clients engage in Twitter feeds. If done well, it can be a great way to engage potential customers with their brand, drive qualified traffic to their site, aid in Online Reputation Management, and reach Search Engine Optimization goals.

We stress to our new Tweeters to spend some time learning the language of their online customer. Businesses should be able to know why anyone would want to ‘follow’ their business on Twitter and what they can give, which others will find useful. After this research, you should understand:

1.    How your customers tweet
2.    How you can join the conversation
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