Marketing & Communications Blog

Free at last

2011-01-10T16:48:00.003+01:00

Here I am. I have not posted anything for a while. I know. I have been busy setting up my own company. I actually started exactly one week ago. So far the results have been quite interesting.

We are currently working on our web page: http://www.mmq.ch/

The site should be up and running in the coming days. I shall keep you posted on this blog.

Also, I am looking into other blogging opportunities, which means that I might migrate the content of this blog in the future. If you have any interesting suggestions in this respect, please feel free to get in touch with me.

Last but not least, I should like to take this opportunity to wish you a great and successful 2011.

Independent Work - Back to Basics

2010-11-18T11:42:00.007+01:00

I have not written anything for a while. The reason is quite simple I have been busy working on a new project that is very time-consuming: starting my own company.

All being well, I should be able to start in January 2011. This is a challenge I have been looking forward to for some months.

Basically, I am going to concentrate on the following activities:

Marketing & Communications concepts
Adaptation of copy texts and advertising campaigns in various languages
Online Marketing & Communications
eCommerce
Music Publishing

The motivations behind my decision are the following ones:

Flexible working time, which can easily be adapted to my needs
A hobby can be turned into a lucrative activity
Small amount of bureaucracy and absence of hierarchies
Different sources of income instead of depending from a single employer, which in my opinion is quite risky nowadays, as you do not know what can happen next (mergers, reorganisations, bankruptcies, difficult financial situation, etc.)
If you are out of work or in a precarious situation it can help you keep your cool.

I shall keep you posted in the coming weeks with further details. Please feel free to get in touch with me for any questions you might have.

Web Site Usability

2010-09-29T13:23:00.018+02:00

An essential point that should be taken into consideration while programming a new web site is usability. A good menu or navigation are of paramount importance, thus allowing the users to go directly where they want to.

According to the Wikipedia, "usability includes considerations such as:

Who are the users, what do they know, and what can they learn?
What do users want or need to do?
What is the general background of the users?
What is the context in which the user is working?
What has to be left to the machine? "

Navigation

A good navigation should show where you are, where you have been and where you can go. The navigation system should be in the same place on every page and have the same format.

Large or complex sites should always have a site map. Visitors will use it to find their way, while search engines spiders will have reliable access to all the pages. Including a home page link on every page is also essential, as many visitors may enter the site via an internal page, but they might want to go to the main page. In addition to this, most sites include their logo somewhere at the top of every page including a link that takes them to the start page. A search box is also very useful for those sites that comprise a large amount of information and/or pages.

Content

Keep it clear and simple: you want to attract visitors, you do not want to deter them.

As a general rule, the most important part should be placed on top or at the very beginning of the page. Think of a press release or an article in the newspapers: the most important facts always come first. Also, Add ALT and TITLE attributes to all images: this will make it easier for the reader to find what he/she is looking for without having to read the whole text.

Be very careful when it comes to colours, images and background. In general, a light background with dark text works better.

Testing

Having the site tested by real users is essential. If the enjoy the site, you are on the right track. Besides, if they understand what the values and purpose of it, you are progressing towards success.

Your site should also provide added value and make the users feel like coming back to it: deep and cogent content encourages visitors to bookmark it and refer it to like-minded people.

Usability testing is the best way to test how well your site works.

Frustrated visitors are not likely to return.

Article Marketing -- The Top Methods for Promoting Your Articles

2010-08-06T15:07:00.004+02:00

Through article marketing given products and services can be promoted online. Article marketing allows writers to promote themselves and their companies to a broader audience by writing articles.

By submitting their texts to multiple article directories, Internet marketers will often try to maximize the results of an article campaign. It must be noted though that most search engines filter duplicate content to prevent the very same text from appearing multiple times in searches. In order to avoid this problem, some marketers create various versions of an article. As a result, one article can theoretically gain traffic from multiple article directories. In general, search engines are looking for quality and original content. Most directories and sites that receive a high volume of traffic are considered authority sites by search engines, which often results in a higher ranking after performing a search.

Basically, content plays an essential role when it comes to writing an article. Key word research is of paramount importance as it helps understand what your target audience is looking for. SEO experts usually urge to incorporate these key words in the headline as well as in the body of the article. Also, make sure to incorporate your target key words in the title of the article using a catchy sentence or mentioning a potential benefit (e.g. “Online Marketing – The Top Methods for Online Promotion”). This will help a potential reader to grasp immediately what the article is about.

As a general rule, articles do not need to be long. They should include 500 to 700 words and be structured in a way which is relevant to the reader.

Besides, try to refrain from selling in the article. An article should provide its readers with added value as well as useful and relevant content.

Promotion through social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin is highly likely to give more exposure to an article. It is important to find people who are interested in the subjects you are writing about and to connect with them, too.

Another way to promote an article can be provided by blog commenting: either by leaving a link to a given article (under the assumption that the site does not have a comment policy against “promotional” links) or by using blogs that enable to get a link to the author bio and to his/her latest article.

Google Wonder Wheel for Your Music Search

2010-07-30T08:41:00.008+02:00

Google Wonder Wheel is a feature from Google which allows you to see relevant search results to your query in a unique semantically relevant and graphically design way. The way it works is realy quite simple: type any keyword in the Google search field, then click "show options" on the top left side, a new toolbar will appear. If you scroll down, you will see a wonder wheel button, click on the links and new fields will pop up. By using this tool you will get an infinite series of related semantic fields, which you can use to optimize the keywords on your web page, Youtube videos, etc.

Google Wonder Wheel will provide you with an excellent scheme about possible new key word ideas. You can navigate your way around the relevant key words and phrases and find more and more results. Google Wonder Wheel can help you filter the results and find the most relevant words related to the original search. Besides, Google wonder wheel is a user-friendly tool because of the way it leads the user to the right term and the right results.

Efficient online marketing for independent labels

2010-07-29T10:16:00.003+02:00

Online marketing is immediate. Time-to-market decreases dramatically when you resort to online activities as opposed to traditional tools such as flyers, adverts, etc. Online marketing enables you to distribute your message immediately after conception and creation with limited coverage loss. In addition to this, online marketing enables you to reach potential buyers worldwide.

On the other hand, selling your music online allows a comprehensive coverage without being confronted with questions like: how many copies am I supposed to press?
Of course this results in an immediate advantage in terms of costs. Not only is online marketing cost-effective, it also enables you to have an immediate response: you will know immediately what you are selling, where and to whom. As a result, you can adapt and correct your promotion activities swiftly.

Online marketing is interactive, too. For instance, if you are promoting your music through forums and social network platforms, you will get immediate reactions: why do people like or dislike your productions.

Nowadays, most independent labels are promoting and selling their music online. The advantages are clear:

Distributing your products becomes much easier
Immediate promotion with a great price/efficiency ratio
Powerful statistic tools
Immediate response from your target audience

Free Online Promotion

2010-07-13T16:35:00.003+02:00

You have just published your new site and you are wondering how to promote it. Of course, you can resort to online marketing like e.g. banners, google adwords, etc. But as somebody says, the best things in life are free. There are many ways to promote your products or services without having to invest anything, except for your precious time.

Free Website Submission Services

Search engine submit services allow you to automate the Website submission process. Usually, you have to fill in one form, press one button and your site is automatically submitted to a multiple search engines without any further efforts.

Free Search Engine Tools

These programmes help you promote your site and analyze your link popularity with the search engines.

Mailing List Services

A free mailing list service allows you to send newsletters to a relatively large group of people (newsletter).Please note that the people receiving these messages have voluntarily opted in to your list and should be provided with the opportunity to unsubscribe from it at any time. A prime example of this is Yahoo Groups.

Webrings

Webrings are virtual communities linking together websites of similar content. Each website in a ring is linked to another by a navigation bar. Another way of looking at this, is that it is just a method for alike sites to share links and boost each other's traffic.

Forum Posting

You can check out the forums that are somehow related to your products/services and post interesting topics an what you do and on what you have to offer. Do not overdo or your peers will immediately tag you as a troll or as a bot.

Link Swapping

You can get in touch with other webmasters who run sites that focus on similar subjetcs as your site does and offer them a link exchange, which is usually something which can really help increase the traffic to your site and generate mutual benefits as well.

Article Writing

Write articles on your capabilities and place them on external sites. Your article creates free advertising for your web page, provide you are allowed to add a link to it. People will read your article and click on the link to your site.

Blogging

There are several blogging sites offering blog space for, like this one for example. It is advisable to post on a regular basis in order to keep your readers interested.

Creation of a Facebook Group

The creation of a group on Facebook can be highly beneficial, as it allows like-minded people to get in touch. In addition to this, you can provide them with further details on what you can do best as well as on your expertise.

Selling Your Music Online - E-mail marketing (part 2)

2010-06-22T14:52:00.003+02:00

I should like to get back on the subject of e-mail marketing, which I already discussed some months ago. As the name suggests, the use of e-mail in marketing communications is a basic tool for the vast majority of independent labels and it covers all the messages you send to customers or potential customers by e-mail.

Its objectives are:

The acquisition of new customers or persuading existing customers to buy your music again.
Customer loyalty and relationship.

In other words, you need to attract your customers and keep them coming back for more. In order to achieve this, you need to keep on providing high-quality music productions.

E-mail marketing is very popular because sending email is much cheaper than most other forms of communication. In addition to this, you can convey your messages directly to your target group with limited wastage. Another relevant element for your successful e-mail campaign is a good list of target people, which can be quite a challenging issue. Responsible e-mail marketing is based on the idea of permission. Basically, you need an email address owner's permission before you can send them a commercial email. If you don't have this permission, then the recipients of your e-mail may regard your message as spam; unsolicited commercial (bulk) email. Also, opt-out opportunities should be offered in every message you send to your recipients.

Last but not least, good copywriting, good design and layout should be taken into consideration, as they might work as eye catchers for your recipients. It is very simple: make it interesting, personal and compelling to the reader.

The subject line is of paramount importance, too. It is often the very first thing that the reader will read. Go straight to the point and make a clear and un mistakable claim.

Social Bookmarking to Promote Your Music

2010-06-16T22:21:00.007+02:00

Social bookmarking is a buzz word right now. Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves are not shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. However, the keyword for success is traffic. An elevated number of visits to the page where you place your bookmarks results in a higher number of clicks.

In addition to this, we should also mention that descriptions may be added to these bookmarks, so that other users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download anything: such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favour of or against the quality of a given file.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, e-mailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.

Nowadays, the smart Internet user is aware of techniques of search engine optimization (SEO) as well as of search engine marketing (SEM). As a result, they might look at the top rankings on a serach engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo with suspicion. Quite the contrary, the credibility of social bookmarking is much higher, as it comes from a network of real people exchanging pieces of information.

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains.

Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.

Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

There are lots of social bookmarking web sites. You have to find the ones that suit your needs.

We have been promoting the following labels through social bookmarking sites:

Find New Clients on Twitter

2010-05-11T17:08:00.006+02:00

Here's an interesting article by Samantha Prinsloo

Twitter was started 2006 and over the past few years, it has shown phenomenal growth. In fact, in February of 2009, Twitter was ranked as the number 3 most popular site on the Net, next to MySpace and Facebook. Many business owners are now using Twitter to promote their business. However, many don’t know how to make the most of the site to their advantage.

For you Twitterers who operate any kind of business, here are some good tips for you:

1. Set Up Your Twitter Account for Business
You must open your own Twitter account first before you can use the site for business purposes. Luckily, that is very simple to do. Once your account has been opened, you should create a profile page for your business. You can also create your own background, or have one created for you, and have your business info on the backdrop image. Once you have your account, profile, and backdrop image in place, you can start letting other Twitter users know about your business.

2. Use Twitter for Market Research
Twitter is a great internet site for market research. Every business has its target market. Through Twitter, you can easily connect with your target market and get pertinent feedback from them. Many of today’s business owners fail because they don’t understand the true needs of their market. With the help of Twitter, you can easily listen to the needs of your prospects, the issues they are currently facing, and discover the kind of help they are looking for. You’ll just need to listen and ask questions.Studying your target market is very important for your business success. Identify their wants and needs so that you can give them answers. Remember, you must try to build trust and confidence. Twitter has millions of users from all over the world. Just imagine how many of them you can get to patronize your business. Finding clients through Twitter is not as hard as you might believe.

3. Use Twitter to Build a List
Twitter is a natural list builder. Twitterers who are interested in your business subject will seek you out and become your follower, and will read your Tweets. You can also seek out like-minded Twitterers and follow them. A lot of them will return the follow. It is said that as many as 40% of those you follow will follow you back. These followers can be thought of as a list of sorts.As your list begins to grow, you can, and should, share information with them. Some examples would be a quick Tweet asking them to opt-in to your newsletter, or offering them a free gift. You don’t want to promote your business every single time you communicate with your target market, or you might be considered a spammer, but it’s absolutely ok to mention it every now and then.

4. Build Relationships with Your Followers
Whenever you meet someone on Twitter, try to establish a good relationship. You are a customer too. You buy from businesses that you trust and like. Your target market also behaves the same way. You must get to know your clients better and win their trust and confidence. Ninety percent of your tweets should contain helpful content and try to limit your promotion. In this way, you can attract more leads and later on they may become subscribers or customers.

5. Tweet Your Events
If you offer teleseminars or any other type of event, you should send out invitations to your followers through Twitter. It’s no-cost and immediate. Start early, and send out several invitations and reminders, interspersed with your other Tweets. The more Twitters who see your Tweet-invitations, the more you will be promoting your business.

6. Start A Blog
Your followers will need a website to visit to find out more about you and your business and what it has to offer. In order to show authority in your business, a good blog or website is a must. You can easily set up a blog, or have one set up for you. There are many tools that can automatically watch for any posts you have made to your blog and share them with your Twitter followers. (Check out our blog here: www.creative-designs.co.za/blog)

Once you have determined what your market wants or needs, you can create blog posts or create articles about those needs and wants. You can also create a new service to meet such needs or perhaps you can conduct a teleseminar on a topic that might interest your target market. Any blog posts, articles, teleseminar, videos or podcasts that you create will attract more leads to your site, both through the usual channels like the search engines, and also through Twitter. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the number of visitors you will receive instantaneously after “Tweeting” about a new post. (Follow Creative Designs on Twitter @CreativeWebHub)

Conclusion
Twitter asks you the question – What are you doing? You must answer this question, in 140 characters or less, so that you can let the whole world know about your business. After that, you can follow the helpful tips mentioned above.

Creative Designs is a flexible design company that specializes in web and graphic design as well as in establishing an internet presence for your company. For more informative articles on harnessing the power of the internet to build your web presence, visit our blog.

Website Optimization

2010-05-07T13:06:00.008+02:00

Any webmaster knows that a site needs some polishing up from time to time. A good website is constantly evolving. Not only does a page need new content or SEO optimization, but it also needs a user-friendlier interface, a new appearance and better usability. An optimized site provides its users with an immediate positive feeling.

Website Design Optimization

While redesigning a web page, there are various aspects that must be taken into consideration:

Creative web and graphic design
Specific use: corporate site, professional small business site, blog, personal page, etc.
Design optimization for organic listings on top of search engines
Credibility and online presence for a given business
Leads and sales generation
Customer response
Branding
Internet marketing
Product and strategy development
Keyword selection
Web copywriting
Linking structure
Competitive intelligence

Relaunch

Usually, site owners relaunch their pages every two or three years. Here are some keywords that shoul be kept in mind while dealing with such a project:

Benefits of a re-launch
Costs
Testing the new page before publishing it
Relaunch date and actions: generate additional traffic / attention / PR
Resource planning
SEO actions

Constant Development

A possible way to avoid a major relaunch is called constant development. Probably, the best way to be always up to date is to proceed by small steps and update any single element of the page whenever necessary. A prime example for this is Google, which is constantly introducing small imperceptible changes. The idea behind it is to minimize risks and to avoid dramatic changes that could confuse the users. The new features are tested first and if they seem to work, eventually they will be implemented.

Advantages of constant development are:

Flexibilty, improvements are possible any time
Time-to-market, new ideas can be easily turned into reality
No specific project costs as for a major relaunch
SEO activities can be integrated into the process or are part of the continuous optimization
Ongoing small changes give a dynamic and flexible image

Disadvantages:

Dedicated competent specliasts are require
Constant costs should be taken into consideration (including SEO)

Costs, dangers, decisions

A major relaunch means making big decisions and being willing to take some rsisks. Sites like e.g. Yahoo, Google or Bing are constantly proceeding by small steps. This means that you can minimize the dangers and losses of money if any mistakes or accidents occur.

Online Advertising Campaign

2010-05-04T17:18:00.006+02:00

Recently, I have been provided with the opportunity to plan an online advertising campaign in Switzerland and I’d like to share my experience with you.

The objective of this campaign was to generate leads, i.e. the acquisition of valuable e-mail contacts including addresses as well as some consumer buying habits, which I won’t mention here because of privacy reasons.

The campaign focused on a very simple message, a competition with a main prize to be won in addition to a voucher for every participant who was willing to provide us with their own address.

Duration: two months

Online:

Banner on own web page

Banner on partner web pages

Facebook advertorial (in German, French, Italian)

Bluewin advertorial (in German, French, Italian)

Banner on Ticinonline (in Italian)

Banner on Ticinonews (in German, French, Italian)

Google Adwords (in German, French, Italian)

Banner on Blick (in German)

Banner on 20 Minuten (in German, French)

Offline accompanying actions:

Posters in POS

Flyers distribution (during events and in selected areas of the country)

The result is interesting. The number of acquired contacts is 7800.

Please feel free to get back to me for further details

Copyright issues on YouTube

2010-05-01T09:36:00.009+02:00

Block, Monetize, or Track Viewing Metrics — It's Automated, and It's Free

That's what the Audio ID and Video ID programme by YouTube promises. I haven't used it yet, but I applied for it. According to YouTube: "YouTube has created an advanced set of copyright policies and content management tools to give rights holders control of their content. YouTube provides content management solutions for rights holders of all sizes across the world, and provides tools to cater to the specific needs of various rights owners.Use of YouTube's copyright tools is free, and does not require any commercial partnership with YouTube."

Here is what the programme promises (quote):

"What are Audio ID and Video ID?
YouTube's state-of-the-art technologies let rights owners:

Identify user-uploaded videos comprised entirely OR partially of their content, and
Choose, in advance, what they want to happen when those videos are found. Make money from them. Get stats on them. Or block them from YouTube altogether.

It's up to you.

How do Audio ID and Video ID work?
Rights holders deliver YouTube reference files (audio-only or video) of content they own, metadata describing that content, and policies on what they want YouTube to do when we find a match.

We compare videos uploaded to YouTube against those reference files.

Our technology automatically identifies your content and applies your preferred policy: monetize, track, or block.

Why use Audio ID and Video ID?

Make Money. Hundreds of media companies have signed up already, multiplying their inventory of monetizeable videos.
Fan Interaction. Turn your fans into marketers and distributors of your content—while letting them interact with their favorite content.
Reduce Infringement. Educate your fans about your copyright preferences and prevent your content from being distributed on YouTube without your permission.
Fully Automated. Once you're set up, Audio ID and Video ID identify, claim, and apply policies to YouTube videos for you.
Market Data. Access snapshots of your content profile on YouTube, anytime. See how your videos are performing, monetizing, being blocked—at a glance.

Who should not use Audio ID or Video ID?
This program is designed for rights holders whose content is frequently uploaded to YouTube by the user community. If no one is uploading content you own, you don't need this program. For content owners with only occasional content management needs, or who seek a simpler solution, YouTube's other copyright tools such as our manual takedown tool may be more appropriate."

Here are some examples of our productions that are currently being used without permission.

Hot Hands pres. Karyna - Quiero tus caricias (DJ Memê vocal mix)
Here quoted as "DJ Zakiofresh club mix". Who is Zakiofresh? He didn't even change a single beat here?

Hot Hands pres. Karyna - Quiero tus caricias (DJ Memê vocal mix)
Here's another example of copyrighted material used without permission. The track is quoted as "Andy A remix", who states: "my own made mix of "Quiero Tus Caricias" featured on Hed Kandi Beach House 2008". That's correct, the track was licenced to Hed Kandi in 2008. What Andy does is to throw in some English spoken acapella from some other source which is unknown to me. If you happen to know, please get back to me.

Hot Hands - Latin Electrico
This song was originally licenced to British label Kinky Malinki.

Image Optimization for Google

2010-04-29T16:43:00.006+02:00

Through SEO (search engine optimization) you can reach a better ranking on google. Google Image Search is a tool used to find a wide range of objects. Not only do images make a website look more attractive and interesting, but they can also help you generate additional traffic on your page.

Martin Mißfeldt in his article (only available in German) Bilder optimieren für Google – Bilder-SEO Basics kompakt defines three main areas of optimization: onpicture, onpage and offpage. In addition to this, this article (19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images) also provides invaluable tips.

Let’s have a closer look at these different areas.

Onpicture Factors

1) Insert keywords into your Alt Text
This is the most important part of image optimization and you should include a keyword or phrase that is relevant to the image and your webpage. The alt text should be inserted in the code for your image file.

2) Name your Images with Descriptive Titles
If you have an image of Jennifer Lopez, you could use the term ‘jennifer-lopz.jpg’ to name your image, instead of simply going with the original file name which could be something like ‘pic567.jpg’.

3) Image size
Apparently, small and oversized images usually achieve disappointing results. The size of your image may determine the amount of visits you receive from Google Image Search.

4) Make your Google Images Standards-compliant
One way of making your images fully standards complaint requires you to include not only the alt tag but also the width, height and title tag for the image as well.

Onpage Factors

1) Use relevant text around your images
Descriptive text including your targeted keywords should be placed immediately before or after the image itself. Whenever you perform a search for any term on Google Image, you’ll find a short description of about 20 characters beneath every image. The keywords are usually listed in bold, too.

2) Optimize Your Title and Meta tags
This should already be part of your overall optimization strategy and it purportedly helps your site to rank better in image searches as well. Like the use of Adsense for testing, paying attention to this point will help you to have better visibility in Google’s main search engine as well.

3) Use anchor text keywords in links to images
When you link to a specific image, use keywords instead of a generic phrase. For example, instead of using “See here” or “Click for Full Size“, try something like “Jennifer Lopez Picture” or “Jennifer Lopez marries Marc Anthony“.

4) Create a separate page and link to the page and image
This process involves adding an optimized page webpage on your website along and link the image to that specific page which visitors can access via the ‘back’ anchor on the new page whenever they find your page through Google Image Search.

Offpage Factors

1) Use Adsense to assess overall content relevance

Insert an Adsense unit on the page where your google images are placed and see what type of Adsense ads show up. This will tell you how Google thinks the overall theme of what your page is about.
Change your content until the Adsense units reflect the keywords you want to target. This is a helpful method as it improves the overall latent semantic indexing score and makes your site appear more relevant to Google for targeted key phrases or words.

2) Use Internal and Social Site Tags for your Images
If you are using images with little or no textual content, it might be helpful to tag your images using internal tagging functions or social tags like Technorati. This may add more weight to your image and help it to rank better. If you are uploading your images using Flickr, remember to use the appropriate keyword tags as well.

3) Make Your Image folder accessible to search engines
Ensure that your robots.txt file does not limit search engines from accessing your image files. This is essential if you want your images to be ranked on Google Image Search. Try not to use javascript links on image files as well as it will limit search engine access as well.

4) Monitor the Number of Google Images indexed
An important part of Google Image Search optimization is to monitor how many images on your website are indexed by Google Image Search to see if you are taking the right steps to optimize your images.

5) HotLink Images from Google Search
This involves going to Google Image Search and to do a search query for the image you want. Visit the original webpage and copy the image location to hotlink it on your own website. This helps your website to show up high among the image search ranks. Most of the images in the top row are hotlinked and actually rank better than the original image source. You should probably note that hotlinking is frowned upon by most webmasters because it leeches their bandwidth, not to mention that you might be violating copyrights as well.

6) Use Images about ‘Hot’ Topics
One easy way to get more visitors from Google images involves the deliberate use of images to catch visitors who are searching for ‘hot’ topics, some of which can be easily found through the use of Google Trends. For example, screenshots of popular ongoing TV shows could be integrated in some way in some webpages. Note that for maximum effect, your content should be relevant to the image used as well.

Video Marketing - Example YouTube

2010-04-27T11:55:00.008+02:00

Videos on YouTube are of paramount importance if you are trying to promote your services and products online. A good ranking while performing a search through an engine like google is essential, as google tends to list the most visited sites at the top of the search results. It is not surprising that when you search for a given piece of information, results from YouTube and the Wikipedia will appear at the very top.

Your video
Banal though it may seem, the content and story of your video should be interesting and convey a message that can arouse the general interest of your target group. I won’t go into details here but a script, an intro and outro, editing and so forth play a major role in this case.

Text is important when it comes to search engines
Text is another important feature that you should consider. Since the search engine spiders cannot read or comprehend videos, you need to use the text fields to optimize your videos appropriately. In other words, your keywords must appear in the title, description, and tags of your video if you are striving for a successful campaign. The more, the better: you’ll be provided with better chances to be found.

You should go for original titles and descriptions or maybe look into niches. There are probably similar videos with similar names and you probably do not want to get lost in the myriad of videos you find on YouTube.

The quantity of characters should not exceed:

120 characters for titles
120 characters for tags/keywords
1000 characters for the description

This text information is allocated directly to the video and essential for search engines.

Video ranking
New videos are usually integrated in the YouTube lists (e.g “Videos Being Watched Now”, “Featured Videos”, “Most Popular”, etc.). It is really important that you try to get the best results from these lists. The average video only receives one hundred views annually.

According to YouTube guidelines there are many factors that influence rankings and can help optimize your videos. These include:

Video title
DescriptionTags
Incoming links
Comments
Subscribers
Ratings
Playlist additions
Flagging
Embeds
Shares
Age of video
Channel views
Views
The number and quality of sites that host or point to your video

Generate traffic
Once your video is online, make sure that there are many external links to your video as possible.
You can generate traffic through social platforms like Facebook of Myspace (see Social Media Marketing).
Another way to promote your video is e-mail Marketing (see E-mail Marketing)
Place your video on your website and, if possible, on other websites, too.
Engage in various communities, post your video on forums like e.g. Yuku, which allow posting of videos.

Each time your video is from a page other than YouTube it still counts as a view. That’s why links from outside pages are so important if you want to reach the top rankings.

Are you successful?
YouTube Insight provides you with statistics and detailed information for free. You can actually see how many page views you have, where people found your video and how popular it is, geographical information, etc.

Monetize thanks to YouTube
When you have succeeded in generating traffic, you can also monetize through YouTube. You can easily link your Adsense account with your YouTube account and earn money when a user clicks one of the google ads.

Streaming music - Example Spotify

2010-04-23T11:51:00.010+02:00

Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. This service provides its users with the opportunity to listen to a large amount of music. Spotify is an enormous library that comprises over 8 million titles. The users can create as many playlists as they like from this collection: they can drag and drop the tracks they want. To dive into this huge music catalogue, simply type the name of an artist, album or track and hit enter. Spotify will give you the results instantly, and the automated suggester will help you remember the spelling, all to make it easy to find the music you love.

There is no need for downloads, as the music plays live, which means that you do not have to use your hard disk space. You can listen at any time, no matter where you are, through your computer or your mobile phone.

You are free to share everything you listen to on Spotify with your friends: tracks, playlists and so forth. By copying the link of a playlist or a track and send it to your friends: they open that link and Spotify starts playing your music on their computer. Drag and drop your favourite tracks into playlists to save them until the next time you listen. The playlists are saved to your account, and accessible from wherever you use Spotify.

You can also create “collaborative playlists” with your friends. Whoever receives the collaborative playlist is able to add or remove tracks or even rename the playlist. This is certainly a further step in the world of social media.

Spotify also gives you the option to buy individual tracks or albums by simply clicking the “Buy” button: from streaming to MP3 files in seconds.

A question that arises spontaneously is: what about the artists and musicians who produce the music? Spotify rewards creativity and intellectual property, in fact they compensate them for the music featured on the platform.

If you are taking your computer outside where there is no internet connection, you can still use Spotify if you have a premium subscription, which means that your playlists are available offline and you can keep listening.

Please get in touch with Music Guide for further details.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

2010-04-09T10:50:00.002+02:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page. There are specific techniques used when building a website that can determine whether or not a search engine can actually be found by the desired target group.
Being ranked in the Top 10 or Top 20 results while performing a search through an engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing is of paramount importance if you are trying to sell your services or products through the Internet. Over 90% of the searches performed in the Western countries are carried out through Google.

In order to give you an idea of the importance of the different search engines, below you find the statistic of my web page:

Google, 96.84%
Yahoo, 2.13
Bing.com, 0.51%
AOL Search, 0.14%
AskJeeves, 0.09%
MSN Search, 0.09%
Live.com, 0.07%
AltaVista, 0.03%
Lycos, 0.03%
Nigma.ru, 0.02%
Neti.ee , 0.01%
Google Images, 0.01%
Seznam, 0.01%
Dogpile, 0.01%
Metacrawler, 0.00%
DMOZ, 0.00%
Mamma, 0.00%

I think that these figures roughly correspond to the general market shares in the Western countries. In other words, this means that when you’re successful on Google you’ve have probably reached your goal.

According to Google, “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important.”
This article ("What Is Linkbuilding?") by Creative Designs provides some interesting background information on linkbuilding.

Achieving a higher ranking is not an easy task and Google does not really provide details on this. The Wikipedia summarizes this quite well:
“Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank. In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and Spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank”. (…)

“PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page. PageRank can be calculated for collections of documents of any size. It is assumed in several research papers that the distribution is evenly divided between all documents in the collection at the beginning of the computational process. The PageRank computations require several passes, called "iterations", through the collection to adjust approximate PageRank values to more closely reflect the theoretical true value.”

“A probability is expressed as a numeric value between 0 and 1. A 0.5 probability is commonly expressed as a "50% chance" of something happening. Hence, a PageRank of 0.5 means there is a 50% chance that a person clicking on a random link will be directed to the document with the 0.5 PageRank.”
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#cite_note-originalpaper-4)

I have been told by some experts that while there are numerous things measured by the Google algorithm, one thing seems to outweigh every other aspect: a listing in the Open Directory Project. Google seems to heavily favour sites and pages that are listed in there. In addition to this, you should try to include the most important keywords in the title and in the description you submit to the Open Directory Project. You can also try submitting subpages. But you need to be careful while doing this. The Open Directory Project rules state that you are only allowed to submit one page per site. Actually, I have noticed that plenty of sites that have more than one subpage listed. The minimum requirement is that the pages your are submitting include relevant content for the category where you’d like to be listed.

You can find some interesting and useful articles here:
http://creative-designs.co.za/blog/?p=276
http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-pagerank
http://www.akamarketing.com/google-ranking-tips.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24821/?a=f

Spotify to enter the US market

2010-04-07T17:05:00.007+02:00

This post is the natural continuation of my previous post. Here's an interesting piece of news:

"Spotify, a virtual digital jukebox and Europe’s largest legal online music site, aims to start U.S. operations in the third quarter.
The Stockholm-based company, which has 7 million users in Europe, is in talks with unidentified U.S. Internet and mobile-phone service providers about partnerships, Senior Vice President Paul Brown said in an interview yesterday. Spotify is also in discussions to start an application on Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Palm Inc. smartphones, he said.
“We’re buying server space in random parts of the states and there are licensing discussions too,” Brown said “But they are going fine because we’re in a long-term partnership with the labels and publishers.”
Digital sales of music accounted for 27 percent of revenue, or $4.2 billion, at the biggest record companies last year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Record companies are trying to curb piracy and illegal downloading by backing legal music sites such as Spotify, MySpace Music and MOG while urging governments to pass laws requiring Internet providers to penalize illegal downloaders.
The worldwide music market has shrunk 30 percent to $17.2 billion since 2004, according to IFPI.
Spotify, which has 325,000 users paying a monthly 9.99 pounds ($14.48) for the service ad-free, is partially owned by the biggest record labels. The site has had more than 10 million euros in ad turnover since starting in October 2008 and users are buying “tens of thousands” of tracks each week through a third party, Brown said.
In the U.S., Spotify would compete with online music services like MOG and Rhapsody. Spotify already has an application for its paying customers on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and the operating systems of Google Inc.’s Android and Nokia Oyj’s Symbian, Brown said."

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alThNVAN9drE
Reporter: Kristen Schweizer

"The legend of Spotify grows stronger with news that the music service is buying server space in the United States with the aim of launching here in the third quarter of this year. As Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told me at SXSW last week, one likely form Spotify will take when it reaches these shores is as an add-on to your mobile phone or internet service.
Spotify already has seven million users in Europe. U.S. fans without press accounts will soon find out what all the fuss is all about, according to Spotify senior vice president Paul Brown.
“We’re buying server space in random parts of the states and there are licensing discussions too,” he told Bloomberg.
Ek said Spotify’s P2P streaming architecture could be made to work on a set-top box and even a cellphone, and a downstream-only version already runs on iPhone and Android devices, with mobile apps for Blackberry and Palm in the works. One catch: you have to subscribe (10 euro per month) in order to use it on a mobile device, where up to 3,333 songs can be cached in playlists for playback when your phone lacks a good data connection.
One reason Spotify is so popular in Europe, in addition to its immense catalog, slick operation and easy playlist sharing and collaboration, is that the desktop version is free so long as you don’t mind putting up with the occasional image-plus-audio advertisement. According to Ek, the labels should be fine with that model, because after all, iTunes too is a freemium service — the only difference is the labels, musicians and publishers aren’t paid when people listen to songs they acquired for free.
Without the unlimited free version, Spotify could end up like Rhapsody’s good-looking Swedish cousin. It’s main point of innovation is to capture revenue from free music listening, the way iTunes doesn’t, but the cost of licensing an on-demand music service like Spotify, which feels like an eight-million-song version of iTunes that loads faster and runs better, is steep. It has traditionally cost about one-penny-per-listener-per-play to play on-demand music in the biggest music market in the world, the United States, and that’s a tough habit to support on ads alone.
Spotify has had a note on its website for perhaps a year now inviting cellular and internet providers and connected television manufacturers to explore a potential partnership to bundle the service with devices and data connections, which makes a lot of sense. If Spotify can’t be free in America (which it still might be), it might as well feel free, and the best way to do that is to tack a bill onto an existing — and much larger — cellphone, internet, or television bill.
Out of Spotify’s seven million European users, 325,000 of them pay the monthly fee that eliminates ads, lets you use the service on a phone, and increases the bit rate of its Ogg Vorbis audio stream. That’s a 5 percent conversion rate. When you consider that only 3 percent of the average iTunes music collection was paid for, by Steve Jobs’ own estimation three years ago, Spotify’s conversion rate from free to paid looks pretty good, and besides, it pays copyright holders when people listen for free.
First, we heard that Spotify was going to launch here by the end of last year, then we heard this spring, and from what Brown told Bloomberg, the new prospective launch date is the third quarter of this year. The big questions — will there be a free unlimited version, and which mobile phone companies, ISPs or television providers will offer a discounted version of the paid service — remain, but these server space purchases are a solid indication that the company’s plans to launch here are real."

Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/inch-by-inch-spotify-now-buying-server-space-in-united-states/#ixzz0jJC1Lyge
Reporter: Eliot Van Buskirk

I look forward to observing the development of this successful streaming solution as it might really ba a turning point in the music usage habits.

Music Cloud Services

2010-03-29T15:35:00.001+02:00

Nowadays we witness the evolution of various online distribution models ranging from the sale of music files in downloadable form; web casting; streaming to subscription services that allow users to select music on demand. There is no simple way to discuss how web sites actively monetize music content on the Internet, simply because the business models in this category are continually evolving. Though the web sites that fall into this category are diverse, the one common ground they all share is the need to obtain licenses for the music.

The most common types of music distribution are probably downloads and streaming. Downloads occur when a distributor transmits a music file to a customer, without any contemporaneous playback of the recorded music, whereas streaming does not leave a physical music file with the customer and involves contemporaneous playback of the music. If the web site allows for downloading of music files, reproduction rights are implicated. If the web site streams the music files, public performance rights are implicated.

Streaming is probably becoming the biggest trend in online music. The basic idea is to move away from downloading songs/tracks and saving them to a device (be it a hard disk, ipod, etc.). This new model is based on two principles or possibilities: a free ad-supported version (paid by advertisers) and a paid premium subscription (paid by users). It would also be possible to have a mixed version, i.e. the combination of a premium version with an ad-supported version. These models could also be expanded through another variable, i.e. a “pay per listen” system or alternatively a flat fee that would allow users to listen to all they want or to a given library or catalogue.

The copyright issues would also be covered by an IP-oriented solution, i.e. this type of service would allow online music sharing in countries where it is legally covered by licensing agreements. Every song has two copyrightable identities: on the one hand, as a “musical work” and, on the other, as a “sound recording”. The musical work encompasses the composition of the music, typically consisting of the lyrics and notes. The sound recording represents the performing artists’ rendition of the music. Usually, a publishing company owns the musical work and a record company owns the sound recording.
Such service would also cover both aspects of the copyright, allowing both labels and publishers to monetize on the online performance of music. On the one hand, the label would be able to find an agreement with a streaming provider, on the other the composers and publishers would get their share for the performance of their music.

An online catalogue could include millions of titles covering different genres. The catalogue or specific site would serve as an aggregator of different databases and thus become a cloud application for music. As already mentioned in the previous lines, the model could be based on advertising like MySpace Music, Last.fm or IMEEM or on the principle that user could also own the music and collect it. The first step should be cheap, unlimited streaming access to a full million-strong catalogue of music that could also lead to MP3s downloads with additional costs if you really want to own the track.

Digital Music Sales – Is This the Future?

2010-02-24T14:54:00.003+01:00

The question arises spontaneously when it comes to the destiny of music. The attitude of younger generations towards music has changed dramatically during the last decade.
Shopping habits as well as sources of information have undergone major changes, e.g. traditional record shops vs. online shops or traditional online magazines vs. online magazines. In my humble opinion, we are witnessing a new era in music. On the one hand, the flexibility has increased enormously: nowadays you can save 2,000 titles from your private collection in a 32 GB iPod, whereas 25 years ago you would have needed an entire room to store 2’000 vinyl records. Let alone browsing through the titles and finding the song you were looking for.

According to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) ((source)), “in 2009 globally, for the first time, more than one quarter of record companies’ revenues came from digital channels. Fans can acquire tracks and albums in ways inconceivable a few years ago – from download stores, streaming sites, subscription services, free-to-user sites, bundled with their broadband or a mobile phone handset.“

Undoubtedly, this is a good piece of news. However, the music industry has to fight against online piracy and illegal file sharing, which remains the most damaging form of piracy due to the volume of files shared by users. In addition to this, the last two years have seen a sharp rise in non-P2P piracy, such as downloading from hosting sites, mobile piracy, stream ripping, instant message sharing and downloading from forums and blogs.

On the other hand, the reaction of the industry has resulted in a diversified offering of services for consumers to buy and access music. Some examples are subscription services; music services bundled with devices and broadband subscriptions; streaming services with applications for mobile devices; advertising-supported services that offer premium services; and online music video services. Last year new service like Spotify and TDC in Denmark have become extremely important as they allow producers and labels to monetize on music usage without having to download any files.

The IFPI web page contains lots of invaluable statistics and figures:
http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_statistics/index.html

For further details on selling your music online, you can also check out the Music Guide site.

Selling Your Music Online - Social Media Marketing

2010-01-21T10:32:00.006+01:00

Social Media Marketing is another effective way to promote your music. Social networks like e.g. Facebook, Myspace or Music List are of paramount importance for your marketing activities.
Social media marketing has some important aspects:

Creating a buzz around your music. It can promote your productions through user to user contact rather than through a "traditional" online shop.
Building ways that enable fans of your music to promote a message themselves.
Social media marketing is not controlled by any organizations, quite the contrary it encourages open discussions.

Objectives

The main objective of social media marketing is to generate traffic and and legal downloads if you're promoting your tracks. Usually, messages like "support the artist" are usually very important.

Feel free to get in touch with Music Guide for further details.

Selling Your Music Online - E-mail Marketing

2010-01-08T12:43:00.004+01:00

So your productions are now available online. The next step is to promote your music and let your potential target group know where they can buy your tracks: easier said than done. Before starting your promotional activities you should ask yourself some questions:

Are the recipients actually receiving your newsletter?
Are they opening your newsletter?
Do they browse through the text or do they actually read it carefully?
Do your recipients open the links to your productions?
Is actually anybody what you are promoting your newsletter?
How many people do unsubscribe from the newsletter?

An increasing number of labels and producers are using newsletters and e-mails as promotional tools. E-mail marketing doesn’t simply mean to spread your messages all over the world, you need to think that you are trying to generate some value. Basically, I would divide e-mail marketing into two main groups:

e-mailings (focusing on specific actions like e.g. special offers, new releases, etc.)
newsletters (published on a regular basis in order to inform your target groups on your general activities)

Key success factors for e-mail marketing:

Banal though it may seem, you need clear objectives
You need a mater plan when it comes to operational activities
The idea behind e-mail marketing should be permission and not spamming
Plan subscribe possibilities on your web page and an immediate confirmation message once a new subscriber registers
Define a clear and cogent unsubscribe policy
Legal requirements: in some countries there are clear opt-in and opt-out rules that should be taken into consideration. Violating applicable laws might get you into serious trouble.
Content
Format (html, plain text, etc.)
Software solutions that could be used
Testing
Bounce management
Controlling

E-mail marketing objectives

Sales
Cross-selling and up-selling
Customer retention
Promotion of new productions
Branding
Keeping in touch with your target group

Content and layout
There are some basic rules that you need to consider while preparing e-mails:

Place the most interesting part at the very beginning of your message
The message should be complete and include all relevant details for what you are trying to sell and promote
A so-called eye-catcher is needed
Go straight to the point
Convey a clear message
Highlight advantages / strengths / USPs
Call for action through a button or a link
Provide response elements
Show price

Relevant performance indicators

Open rate
Click rate
Conversion rate
Bounce rate
Unsubscribe rate

Online Advertising

2009-11-07T20:03:00.010+01:00

The wikepedia defines online advertising as "a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers."

The objectives of online advertising include:

brand awareness
online ad awareness
message association
purchase intent

Types

There are different tools that can be used to promote your messages through the web.

Banners (static, animated, HTML, nanosite, transactive, DHTML, rich-media banners)
Trick banner: a banner ad that looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert.
Floating ad: an ad which moves across the user's screen or floats above the content.
Expanding ad: an ad which changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage.
Polite ad: a method by which a large ad will be downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed
Sticky ad
Screensaver ad / wallpaper ad: an ad which changes the background of the page being viewed.
Video ad: similar to a banner ad, except that instead of a static or animated image, actual moving video clips are displayed.
E-Mercials
Interstitials
Pop-up: A new window which opens in front of the current one, displaying an advertisement, or entire webpage.
Pop-under: Similar to a Pop-Up except that the window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until they close one or more active windows.
Text links
Search engine marketing
Associate Programs
Web pages sponsoring
Map ad: text or graphics linked from, and appearing in or over, a location on an electronic map such as on Google Maps.
Mobile ad: an SMS text or multi-media message sent to a cell phone.

Revenue models

There are various ways in which online advertising is purchased.

CPM (Cost Per Mille), also called "Cost Per Thousand (CPT), is where advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience.

CPV (Cost Per Visitor) or (Cost per View in the case of Pop Ups) is where advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.

CPC (Cost Per Click) is also known as Pay per click (PPC). Advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. CPC differs from CPV in that each click is paid for regardless of whether the user makes it to the target site.

CPA (Cost Per Action) or (Cost Per Acquisition) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser pays only for the amount of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up.

Similarly, CPL (Cost Per Lead) advertising is identical to CPA advertising and is based on the user completing a form, registering for a newsletter or some other action that the merchant feels will lead to a sale.

Also common, CPO (Cost Per Order) advertising is based on each time an order is transacted.

Cost per conversion describes the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an ad campaign by the number of conversions. The definition of "Conversion" varies depending on the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

Selling Your Music Online - Online Marketing Strategy

2009-10-12T20:43:00.020+02:00

Like traditional marketing, online marketing needs some strategic thoughts. In order to be succesful when it comes to selling your music online, you must develop and implement a strategic plan that includes:

Great productions
One or more websites/shops which are specifically designed to sell (working with more shops increases your chances to be successful)
Pricing strategy (most shops will allow you to choose between different price ranges)
Promotion (online & offline activities)

Developing Your Product
Your first step will be to develop great music productions. Apparently, around 60% of the music you may find on online shops does not generate any sales at all. Easier said than done...
Use your knowledge and skills: the key to developing a great product is exclusiveness. Your product should be unique and not be in competition with hundreds of other similar products. You must give your potential customers exactly what they want.
Another consideration of great importance is your target market. Keep in mind, the Internet is a global marketplace. Develop a product with a large geographic target and a wide appeal.

Web site(s) / shop(s)
Once your product is ready, you need to place on your own site and/or sell it through existing shops.

Pricing
Some shops will provide you with the opportunity to sell your products at special prices. In some cases, this could be a good opportunity to offer specials packages at extremely advantageous prices.

Promotion
Placing your music in a given shop will not make you sell a single MP3 unless you plan some marketing activities. Marketing theory distinguishes between two main kinds of promotional strategy: push and pull.
A push strategy makes use of a company's sales force and trade promotion activities to create consumer demand for a product. The producer promotes the product to aggregators (online distributors), the aggregators promote it to online shops, and the online shops promote it to consumers.
A pull strategy is one that requires high spending on advertising and consumer promotion to build up consumer demand for a product. If the strategy is successful, consumers will ask their online shops for the product, the online shops will ask the aggregators, and the aggregators will ask the producers.

Your marketing plan must include both short-term and long-term strategies in order to succeed. Short term marketing strategies are those that bring you a temporary boost in traffic and sales. Short term marketing strategies include :

Online advertising (e.g. banners)
Participating in forums (mentioning your latest music and by letting the other participants know where it can be purchased)
Newsletters

Long term marketing will continue to produce results even years down the road.
Long term marketing strategies include:

Opt-in lists
Blogging
Social networking sites
Giving away freebies (e.g. to DJ's, radio stations, etc.)

Added Value of online marketing
Online marketing activities do actually have some advantages:

Technical targeting, thanks to you which you can target given IP addresses and, as a result, certain areas or countries. In addition to this, by taking the browser language, messages in the language of the potential buyer are possible. It is also possible to show a banner at a particular time.
Geo targeting. Thanks to geo targeting it is possible to trace back up to 80% of the areas from which the user are located. This is a good opportunity to promote given activities very specifically (e.g. a launch party for a new music production)
Demographic targeting. Some providers (e.g. a particular music platform) do have very detailed and specific data of their users: not only age or gender, but buying habits, likes/dislikes, purchase frequency, etc.
Key word targeting, e.g. Google ad words, which allow to blend in sponsored links.
Contextual targeting. It is possible to place an advert on a given web page based on its context. Not only do Google ad words appear on Google but they also appear in the advertising network of Google (ad sense programme). This could be good to promote your productions on a music web page.
Behavioural targeting. Let us assume that a user is looking at the latest releases on a music portal. A couple of minutes later he switches the a news site: here, based on his/her behaviour, banners of this music shop can be shown.
Real time tracking. Online marketing allows you to measure the success of your promotions and campaigns almost immediately

If you need support in selling your music online, Music Guide Publishing could help you. They can be contacted by e-mail.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

2009-09-30T12:03:00.004+02:00

These are hard times, as everybody knows. The only thing I can do is to dedicate this song by Ian Dury & The Blockheads - "Reasons To Be Cheerful" - to you

Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed
Why don't you get back into bed

Reasons to be cheerful part 3

1 2 3

Summer, Buddy Holly, the working folly
Good golly Miss Molly and boats
Hammersmith Palais, the Bolshoi Ballet
Jump back in the alley and nanny goats

18-wheeler Scammels, Domenecker camels
All other mammals plus equal votes
Seeing Piccadilly, Fanny Smith and Willy
Being rather silly, and porridge oats

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You're welcome, we can spare it - yellow socks
Too short to be haughty, too nutty to be naughty
Going on 40 - no electric shocks

The juice of the carrot, the smile of the parrot
A little drop of claret - anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, days when I ain't spotty,
Sitting on the potty - curing smallpox

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

1 2 3

Reasons to be cheerful part 3

Health service glasses
Gigolos and brasses
round or skinny bottoms

Take your mum to paris
lighting up the chalice
wee willy harris

Bantu Stephen Biko, listening to Rico
Harpo, Groucho, Chico

Cheddar cheese and pickle, the Vincent motorsickle
Slap and tickle
Woody Allen, Dali, Dimitri and Pasquale
balabalabala and Volare

Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying hokey-dokey, singalonga Smokey
Coming out of chokey

John Coltrane's soprano, Adi Celentano
Bonar Colleano

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

1 2 3

Yes yes
dear dear
perhaps next year
or maybe even never
in which case

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

1 2 3

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

1 2 3

Reasons to be cheerful part 3

Ali is in the house!

2009-08-18T16:50:00.009+02:00

Do you remember Ali G? He is a satirical fictional character invented and performed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (also known for other caharacters such as Borat or Brüno). Here in Switzerland (the country where I live), another Ali has been getting a lot of exposure for the last couple of weeks. This time he is not a wannabe gangsta rapper, but a kebab seller. Everybody has been asking themsemselves: who is this guy Ali and what is he promoting? Some people would rumour that a xenophobic party was behind this campaign, others would go for a new fast food chain. Some other peers would say that there was outdoor advertising specialist was responsible for this campaign. The mystery has finally been revealed: the teaser campaign has been promoted by APG, which is the market leader in Swiss out-of-home advertising. For further details, check out this page.

The idea behind this highly successful campaign during a quiet period like August is that APG can make your business successful. The current visual is on display throughout Switzerland until September 14.

Billboards are typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads, in train stations or airports. They present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers. Typically showing large, catchy slogans, and distinctive visuals. Billboard advertisements are designed to catch a person's attention and create a memorable impression very quickly, leaving the reader thinking about the advertisement after they have driven past it. They have to be readable in a very short time because they are usually read while being passed at high speeds. Thus there are usually only a few words, in large print, and a humorous or arresting image in brilliant color.

One thing is obvious in this case: APG has launched a campaign that has outclassed any other advertiser.

Selling Music Online

2009-08-05T14:15:00.018+02:00

CD and vynil sales have been dropping constantly. As a result, many artists/producers/labels have resorted to the download business, which is an easy way to market your products.

This might sound silly, but in order to sell music online, you need good songs. Nowadays, thanks to technology, almost anybody can produce music. Please bear in mind that the public is still looking for well-produced and qualitative cuts and albums.

Let us assume you have a great production and want to sell it online. What do you do? You can either work out a deal with an online label or sell it yourself. If you go for the second solution, there are some things you need to do: you have to apply for a global trade number (UPC if you are based in the US and EAN if you are located in Europe). These codes are used worldwide for marking products (either offline or online). For further details, check out this site.

In addition to this, you also need to apply for an ISRC number (ISRC = International Standard Recording Code). The ISRC is an international standard code for uniquely identifying sound recordings and music video recordings. ISRC registrant codes are allocated by national ISRC agencies to both corporations and individuals. For further details.

Now you are ready to market your productions online. Here again you have two opportunities: either apply for a direct account with the shops you are interested in working with (iTunes, Beatport, Traxsource, Juno, etc.) or you might want to work with a so-called aggregator. In general internet terms, an aggregator is a website where tracks are collected by an online distributor and forwarded to other shops. The advantage of working with an aggregator is clear: you only need to upload your music and insert the data related to your songs (title, composer, publisher, running time, etc.) once, whereas when working directly with online shops, you will have to go through this process lots of times. On the other hand, by working with an aggregator you will have to give up a percentage of your revenues.

Your songs are now online, but there are some basic rules you need to take into consideration. The fact of having your music on sale in a shop like e.g. iTunes will not contribute to a single download if you do not promote your products like in the "offline" world. Technically, this is called "push and pull". A push-pull-system describes the move of a product or information between two subjects. On markets the consumers usually "pulls" the goods or information they demand for their needs, while the offerers or suppliers "pushes" them toward the consumers. In other words, in a push strategy the communication between seller and buyer takes place and in a "pull" system the consumer requests the product and "pulls" it through the delivery channel.

To cut a long story short, you need instruments like newsletters, podcasts, banners/skyscrapers/ad words on various portals or online shops, promotion through social networks, sms marketing, etc. to promote your music and, on the other hand, you need online presence to be successful.

Also, you might want to consider working with a publisher when selling your music online. Publishers and authors (composers, lyricists and arrangers) sign an original publishing agreement. Under the terms of that agreement, the publisher undertakes to artistically and economically exploit the works transferred to him at his own cost and risk. In particular, that involves producing and distributing scores of the work (own publishing rights); finding a record company to distribute recordings of the work; finding a producer to use the work for a film; finding an artist to play the work or finding a musician to arrange the work. In other words, the publisher of a work is its manager. A publisher is not the same thing as a record company. The publisher has to find a record company to produce and publish the work. Many record companies have their own publishing departments and handle both sides of the business for economic reasons.

If you need support in selling your music online, Music Guide Publishing could help you. They can be contacted by e-mail.

Agency Brief

2009-08-05T10:00:00.014+02:00

Paradoxical though it may seem the brief is of paramount importance when a company decides to launch a campaign. The results might often turn out to be badly targeted, expensive and ineffective.

A good brief saves you both time and money! It provides a clear basis to evaluate the creative content put forward by your agency. Every agency needs a certain amount of information before any recommendations can be prepared. That is why a good brief should clearly convey the communications strategy. As a general rule, the written brief is agreed to and signed off by yourself and the agency. It can't be based on assumpations, you need evidence.

Let's start from the very beginning. Here is what you should include in your brief.

Your address

Company name, department, postal address
Contacts including functions
Direct telephone and fax number, e-mails

Assignment

Project name, short description of project
Problem(s) you need to solve
Expected service
Interfaces to other ongoing projects
Other projects you are currently planning
Timing and deadlines

Situation analysis

Market in general
Segments
Maximum capacity of market
Market potential
Own positioning in the market
Market share
Own selling and turnover potential in the market
Own selling and turnover volume
Current factors and influences
Trends

The proposition
(products and services)

History, development, communications
Summary of properties including strengths and weaknesses
Patents and licences
Usage, prime benefits and other benefits
Pricing for end-purchasers
Name of the products and services, characteristics of the products and services, branding and packaging
Life cycle phase of the products and services (introduction, mature phase, saturation, etc.)
Legal regulations, limitations
Services (support, guarantee, disposal, payment options)
Positioning, competitive advantages
Previous communications actions (instruments, messages, layout, media, examples)

Distribution

Channel and trading partners
Distribution and marketing system
Distribution and marketing policy
Distribution area
E-commerce
Distribution structure and infrastructure
Delivery time, inventory turnover
Sales policy
Base price for trade and margins

Purchasers and end-users

Socio-economic structure of purchasers and end-users (age groups, social and and pruchasing power structure, place of residence, profession, education, etc.)
Psychological factors
For B2B: markets, industries, companies you intend to target
Customer segmentation
Purchase frequency
Purchasers and end-users behaviour
Purchasing habits
Usage habits
Brand and company loyalty
Are purchasers and end-users aware of our complete offering?
Motivation and needs
Company and brand image

Opinion leaders

External opinion leaders (e.g. personalities, schools, trade press, associations, etc.)
Internal opinion leaders (e.g. board of directors, project manager, family, etc.)

Competition

a) Products/Services

Name of competitors and headquarters
Market positioning
Strengths and weaknesses
Details on purchasers and end-users
Pricing
Branding and packaging

b) Distribution

Channel and trading partners
Distribution and marketing system
Distribution and marketing policy
Distribution area
E-commerce
Distribution structure and infrastructure

c) Communications / advertising messages

Objectives
Messages
Style, layout
Media
Assumptions and estimates on budget

Regulations and specifications

General legal restrictions
Competition regulations
Industry regulations
CI/CD, design specifications

Focus and orientation

a) Vision / mission / core values of board of directors / marketing manager / product manager

b) Marketing objectives (turnover, market share, distribution, etc.) on the long/middle/short term

c) Marketing strategy (expansion or competition strategy / market penetration)

d) Potential

Quantitative (market and segments development, market share)
Qualitative (habits, image, rational and emotional values, etc.)

e) Positioning / advantages against competition

USP (unique selling proposition)
UAP (unique adversting proposition)
Needs you can fulfil
Reason why
Characteristics of product/services
Advantages for end-users

f) Communications platform

Mission statement
Corporate deisgn
Type and style
Visual identity
Target groups
Key messages
Communications mix (sales promotion, online advertising, direct marketing, sponsoring, events, billboards, TV campaign, etc.)

g) Own ideas for advertising media, giveaways, visual and textual implementation)

h) Deadlines and timing

i) Budget

How to choose an advertising agency

2009-07-28T20:30:00.016+02:00

The choice of an agancy is a demanding task. Once you have some names of agencies, you need to choose which will be most suitable for your business. Do they have the right expertise for you? Is the agency capable of providing the kind of creativity you are looking for?
Last but not least, the interpersonal exchange plays a major role; factors like mutual trust and understanding are very important.

Preliminary Screening

Before selecting any agancies, you should ask yourself some questions.

Are they the right size for you? Bigger isn't necessarily better.
Do they have the right expertise for you?
What is their reputation?
How do they charge and how do they measure effectiveness? Will they negotiate on fees?
Are they a 'full service' agency, capable of handling work other than classical advertising?
Do you like them?

Agency Pitch

You should arrange to meet some of the agencies - ask about three of them to pitch their ideas to you. The pitch is where an agency competes for your business by presenting prepared work. Some agencies might charge for this. Before asking an agency to pitch, you need to provide a detailed brief, a budget, the kind of contractual co-operation you are looking for.

Find out if the team pitching to you will be the team that works on your account. Most businesses find that personality is important. You need to get on well with people in the agency you employ if you're looking for a fruitful, long-term relationship. Before taking any decisions, it might be worthwhile paying a personal visit to the agency in order to get an idea how they work and meeting the people you are going to work with in their natural environment.

Selection Criteria

Location
Years in business
Number of employees
Agency philosophy
Methods of operation
Experience
Client portfolio
Interests
Specialities

Does the agency...

have experience in your industry?
have experience in similar industries?
know how to target audience you want to address?
understand the key messages you want to put across?
understand the key objectives you want to achieve?
invest the budget you have set properly?

In which areas is the agency good?

Consultancy
Branding
Corporate identity / corporate design
Corportae communications
Image advertising
B2B advertising
Radio and TV spots
Multimedia, corporate films
Online advertising / e-commerce / online marketing / serach engine otpimization and marketing
Giveaways
Sales promotion
POS marketing
Exhibitions and fairs
Event marketing
Packaging
etc.

Does the agency offer any of the following points?

Dedicated account manager
Interdisciplinary methods of operation
Qualified and experienced team members
Small employee turnover
Enough resources if needed
Transperent cost structure
Different compensation possibilities (basis fees, flat rates, invoicing on a hour-basis)

Online PR in action

2009-07-22T10:38:00.001+02:00

General Introduction

Smaller businesses often have high expectations when it comes to visibility. They need value for money when they invest in communications. They also appreciate that more and more opportunities come from the web.

Online PR

Press releases may look like an old-fashioned way to communicate, but in reality they are a way to arouse interest towards a given company. On the other side, press release can also boost web traffic.
A journalist's job is completely dictated by the whims of the readers. The objective of any publication is to appeal to a given audience. Before writing anything at all, you need a good "story". By story I mean a piece of interesting information. A good story must be current and communicate something special and different.

E-Mail press release

What do journalists expect? A good press release should take the following points into consideration:

Clear and cogent content: the message(s) you are conveying need to be clearly structured and formulated as well as tailor-made for those who are supposed to read.
Direct delivery: journalists are only interested in reading what they're interested in. Their questions and doubts need to find a quick anwer. On the other hand, they expect contacts they can call while carrying researches on given topics.
Relations to the media are based on mutual trust, which is a long-term process. PR managers who are able to deliver quick and serious pieces of information become pivotal in the success of PR activities.

The distrubution of a press release through the e-mail is particularly advantageous: it is fast, it can easily be saved, copied, searched. Besides, it can be sent from anywhere and at any time to the desired recipient(s).

As a general rule, the e-mail subject should be short and significant.

The content of the e-mail should not be too long, either. Usually, journalists prefer short unformatted texts. Although HTML mails might look better, they also might easily become an obstacle: copy, paste, etc.

The basis for the successful distribution of press releases are personal contacts. Mutual trust improves co-operation. Follow-up of your media work should preferably take place by phone or personally.

Web media archive

A media archive is of paramount importance for journalists so that they can find anything they need in a single section of your web page. A good media section should include the following chapters:

press release archive (the latest communiqués should be placed at the top and by ordered by date¨)
pictures and logos (in high resolution)
list of events and sponsoring
some general background information on the company (company presentation, chronological history, etc.)
investor relations (annual reports, financial statements)
relevant clippings from the press (e.g. interview with CEO)
case studies, white papers, best practices
press contact (name, telephone, e-mail)

Monitoring and measurement

Keep an eye on the media from your distribution list. You could subscribe to a clipping service, which makes life a bit easier. However, you need to keep in mind that they are not 100% reliable: a good service usually covers up to 80-90% of your target media.

In some cases, when you are on good terms with journalists, you might receive links or copies/photocopies of your release directly from the publications you have been distributing your material to.

It is also very important to keep an eye on your web statistics and measure the traffic load to some of the pages of your site including web site referrals and key words visitors have been looking for.

Internet Marketing & Communications

2009-07-21T18:11:00.001+02:00

In general

In the following lines I'll try concentrate some of the main point arising from my experience with the Internet, which nowadays should play a central role in the communications plan of every company.

While dealing with Internet communications and online marketing, two basic points should be considered:

1) Monitor experience

Quantity of information that appears on your screen
Text(s)
Animations
Pictures
Visual elements
Sounds

2) Internet experience

As the user is confornted with a very fast medium, it is important that the information be either:
- brand new or
- up-to-date or at least still
- valid
24/7 & 365 days/year
fast / slow connection
the quantity of data you have access to is practically unlimited
everybody can publish anything at any time

General considerations

Online communications are nothing but an additional way to convey messages to your target group(s). Basically, while working on a new web page or online affiliate marketing, you should ask yourself the same questions when you produce a brochure or when you plan an adverstising campaign:

Key messages
Affinity
What are your competitors doing?
Etc.

Planning

When planning your online activities, the very same elements for online activities should be taken into consideration, i.e.

Objectives
Target group(s)
Strategic elements
Content, including:
- Interactivity with your target group(s)
- Integration with other communications channels (adverts, brochrues, radio, TV, etc.)
Actions
Costs
Timing
Budget

Maintainance

The basic difference from a conventional brochure, radio spot or advert is that a web page, adword, etc. needs constant updating and changing. An advantage (a fast way to convey a message) can easily become a nightmare if your messages are not constantly updated. A motto like "less is more" is of paramount importance. Pages and messages should be structured in a way that interactivity for further details is encouraged.

Statistics

This a clear advantage of working with online instruments. Detailed evaluations of your visitors are possible including:

Daily, weekly, monthly visitors
Most visited pages
Visitors via referrers, incl. serach engines
Website referrers
Geo tracking
Javascript Enabled
Browsers used
Key words
Etc.

Marketing plan outline

2009-07-02T16:22:00.001+02:00

This is an outline of a complete marketing plan.

Summary
Current situation
Key success factors
Financial situation / needs

Vision
Vision statement

Market analysis
The overall market
Changes in the market
Market segments
Customer characteristics
Customer needs
Customer buying decisions

Competitive analysis
Industry overview
Nature of competition
Changes in the industry
Primary Competitors

Opportunities / Issue Analysis
SWOT Analysis

Forecast

Objectives
Quantitative objectives
Qualitative objectives

Target groups
Demographics
Consumer habits
Social habits
Lifestyle

Strategy
Key competitive capabilities
Positioning

Action Program
Product
Price
Promotion
Distribution

Timing

Budget (financial forecast)

Controls

Please note that structure should follow strategy.

Additional details on this subject can be found on the wikipedia.

Checklist for an Abstract

2009-05-28T22:27:00.001+02:00

Events usually represent the right opportunity to give presentations. Before being allowed to present, you are usually required to provide an abstract. These are some things that you need to keep in my mind while writing an abstract.

The abstract should:

Strive for an impersonal, non-critical, and informative account.
Give a clear, grammatically accurate, exact, and uniform treatment of the subject.
Provide rationale or justification for the article/presentation/etc. The statement should give a brief account of the purpose, need, and significance of the investigation.
State the objectives clearly as to what is to be obtained.
Give a brief account of the methods. Be specific.
Outline conclusions or recommendations. An emphasis of the significance of the work, conclusions, and recommendations.
Use specific figures whenever possible to avoid use of general terms, especially in presenting the method and reporting the results.
Do not exceed 250 words.

The abstract should include the following sections:

Rationale
Objectives
Methods/Solutions applied
Results
Conclusion

How to plan an event

2009-05-28T22:23:00.001+02:00

In my career I've coordinated more than 50 B2C and B2B events, be it tarde fairs, exhibitions, in-house events, VIP meetings.

The following scheme has proved very useful while planning.