Barb Mosher's Blog

Posted by Barb Mosher

Google is offering a cross-product webinar on a number of their webmaster tools on July 8, 2008 at 9am PST. Here's a look at what will be covered:

• Webmaster Tools - learn how to understand how search queries are driving traffic to your site, see your top content and where you sit in the search results.
• Google Analytics - learn how to implement analytics within your site and see how the results provide you with lots of information on how people are finding you, what they are looking for and how effective your ads, campaigns and newsletters actually are.
• Google Website Optimizer - learn how to improve your website using the information you have gathered via analytics and the webmaster tools and technologies, test different options to see what works best.

Head on over to Google to register for the event. Also note that if you can't make the date, Google will offer the webinar as a download later on - so you won't miss out.

Posted by Barb Mosher

People are constantly on the go these days. As much as they love their internet, they can’t always take it with them, at least not completely. But they do take their mobile phones, or their Blackberrys or smart phones. And that’s a good thing for e-marketing.

According to a recent eMarketer Report, “Mobile Social Networks”, there is a strong demand for mobile social networks. They forecast that mobile social networking “will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to over 800 million worldwide by 2012. Now there’s a market for you.

What does this have to do with marketing your business? Social networks have become one of the most popular ways to market your business. You join a social network for several reasons:

• Find people with the same expertise: This allows you to build a network of people in the same industry.
• Find people who are interested in the things you know: This allows you to build a following of interested people who may want you to provide quotes, give interviews, write articles – all effective marketing techniques
• Find out what people are looking for, interested in, giving you ideas to further develop products and/or services.

With the popularity of mobile social networking, it’s like you have access to a market that is always available. Most of the bigger social networks have a mobile version available. Sites like Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn and many others are available via mobile device.

So if you are looking for a new way to market your business, look for social network sites have a mobile version, the market is getting bigger every day.

Posted by Barb Mosher

According to Forrester, Enterprise 2.0 is going to becoming a US$4.6 billion dollar industry by 2013. That's not that far away. Is your company looking at what social media and social networking solutions can do to improve productivity, customer relations and in effect - the bottom line?

If you're not, you probably should be. Put aside the fact that there are any number of social media/social networking products/services you can buy. Don't think about the technology. Rather start thinking about two things:

• Is employee productivity hampered by not being able to fquickly ind the information they need to get their work done? Are there specialists within your organization that people could rely on for information - if only they could find them?
• Do you know what your customers are saying about you? Are they out there on the internet in public social networks saying good or not so good things about your products and services? Wouldn't you rather become a part of that communication, then sit outside watching through the window?

Enterprise 2.0 is about improving employee productivity, and it's about helping your customers get what they want. So sit back and think about the problems your having today, write them down so you can clearly see the issues. Then think about what Enterprise 2.0 principles and technologies can do to help resolve these issues.

I don't encourage implementing these technologies without a good plan to measure if they actually help. But a carefully thought out strategy and implementation plan should help go a long way to drive ROI up and making happy customers and employees.

Posted by Barb Mosher

Social Networks are often praised as great marketing tools for companies. But they are all they are cracked up to be especially if they aren’t used properly.

According to Jeremy Owyang, social media strategist for Forrester and blogger of Web Strategist there are many issues with marketing on social network sites, some of which include:

• Marketing is difficult to monetize: Probably one of the biggest issues for a marketer is that it’s hard to determine how social networks increase sales or profits for a company. Owyang says social networks are about sharing information and communication. Measuring how that contributes to sales is difficult in comparison to measuring how search advertising contributes.
• Large number of white label players: White label social networks are social networking sites that allow you to setup a social network for your company and brand it appropriately. With the high number of these types of vendors out there it’s difficult to know which one is the best to use and if it will draw the membership you need.
• Untrustworthy Member Data: How can an organization be sure that the data provided by members is real information? They can’t, but can only trust that people are signing up for a valid reason and thus providing valid data.
• Lack of access to Metrics to Measure Success: If an organization isn’t deploying on their own servers, it’s hard to get the metrics from the hosting server that will help understand how the site is performing.

These are just some of the issues with a social network as a marketing tool. That’s not to say you shouldn’t consider them, just be aware of potential issues. In some cases, using existing networks like Facebook might be the best option than going to a white label version.

Posted by Barb Mosher

There's a new browser in town - or at least a new version of a browser. Microsoft has opened the Beta evaluation of IE8 to the general public.

This new version is a little different from the older versions. It contains three different display modes to support backwards compatibility with sites and applications developed in older versions.

For sites that were developed in IE5.5 or lower - IE8 has a "quirks" mode. This mode is also in existence in IE6 and IE7 but most people probably didn't realize it. It's for sites built using older technologies so they don't break in newer versions that support new web standards.

The other two modes are "standard" and "super-standard".

Standard supports sites and applications developed or compatible with IE7 standards mode. This mode is an attempt at following web standards - but not that well.

Super Standards mode is the latest mode and is more tightly committed to supporting the web standards that most organizations and developers have been calling for.

Now as a user, people won't know which version they are in. But as a designer of sites and applications, you need to be aware of these modes and how you will design your site. What mode will you use (IE7 standards mode or IE8 super standards mode). Look at both options carefully and then make your selection.

Hopefully we won't wait too long for IE8 to be RTM.