Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert – Nigel Burke's Blog

dot mobi domain names

A new type of domain name extension is available for registration; the dot mobi (.mobi) and companies all over the world are rushing to register a .mobi version of their domain name. So why do you need one? Well, the mobile phone is without doubt the new advertising medium, and this is very apperent through some simple statistics:

- There are four times as many mobile phone users in the world as there are internet users

- There are more mobile phone owners in the world than TV and PC owners combined

The dot mobi domain extension has been developed to use for your website’s mobile version, which, instead of showing a condensed version of your website will show a version that has been developed to fit the mobile format.

Even if you don’t have a mobile version of your website yet it might be a good idea to secure your .mobi version of your domain name now to make sure you can use it later.

Apple’s former CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs has died at the age of 56.

Apple has released a statement confirming Jobs’ death.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,” the statement said.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

In August, Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO with Tim Cook named as his successor.

On the Apple.com website – Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

AVS Networks has been nominated for the City of Sydney Business Awards 2011

The Sydney Business Awards is designed to embrace the wide range of businesses operating in Sydney, and AVS Networks has been nominated in the Information & Communication Technology category. The finalists’ selection is based on public votes, so if you want to support AVS Networks make sure you vote for us today!

You can vote online or by SMS

Vote Online – Go to http://sydneybusinessawards.com.au/sba/vote/(id)/657 and fill out the form, then click on VOTE.

Vote by SMS – Send the code “AVS” to the Business Awards hotline: 0447 447 070. Standard rates apply.

All voters enter a draw to win $1500 cash!

Thanks for your support.

So how did you go on the challenge I posed in my last blog post?

The fact is that two of them were convicted for discriminating sexes.

The ad above for Boxer (above) was convicted on the grounds that he is posed as a sexobject which can be offending to men. The company used a humoristic approach in the ad but the ombudsman did not find it funny. So how can it be reasonable to have a law like that, you might ask? Are the underwear companies, for example just going to show their products on dolls in ads? Well as with most rules,  there are exceptions. You can show men or women in underwear/swim suits and the like IF it is related to your product! That is why Stadiums ad (below) did not get convicted.

My name is Jenni Hagman and I will be a guest bloggers today on Nigels blog! I am from Sweden so I thought that I could share some marketing practices from my country. Today’s post will be on the subject of ethical marketing, more specified: an ethical advertising ombudsman and pose a challenge for the readers on this topic!

An ombudsman is a “Government official appointed to investigate citizen’s complaint against government officials, large public and private corporations, and/or print media” (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/ombudsman.html). The word ombudsman originally comes from Swedish and is actually one of the FEW words that have migrated from Swedish into English!

Google showed of it’s new operating system (OS) yesterday. You may have heard about this on the news but you may be wondering what the big fuss is all about. It’s just another software launch right?

About Google
Google started out as a search engine company. They provided great search engine results to everyone. A high ranking in Google is great for business because it generates so much traffic.

Then Google started introducing other applications such as AdWords, AdSense, Google Apps, Maps, and a whole heap of other services. Essentially moving away from it’s core focus of search results.

Google Chrome Browser
The Chrome browser has re-ignited the browser wars yet again. Before Chrome, MS Internet Explorer had 69% of the market share and FireFox had 16%. Things have changed here. MS Internet Explorer now has 49%. FireFox has 29% and Chrome has grown to 12%.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how newspapers and magazines were dying. They are suffering from lower readership and Rupert Murdoch wanted to introduce a ‘pay wall’. A pay wall is where users have to pay to read the news online. I do not think many people would want to pay to read the news when they have been getting it free for so many years.

The Times and the Sunday Times, owned by News Corp in the UK, have introduced a pay wall to read their newspaper online and through iPad Apps. It was far from successful.

The online audience for the Times and Sunday times has gone from 3 million unique visitors to about 200,000 paying subscribers. 100,000 of these subscribers are free accounts for customers who are already subscribed to the print version. About 105,000 are new paid users.

S-Street is on the beat with some cool youtube videos lately. The latest one is – There’s an App for that!

Strangely though, it’s connected to a pogo stick which is a really old toy from decades ago. Actually, they call it the iPogo.

Anyway, here’s the video – enjoy!

Affiliate marketing is a term usually used within the Internet marketing community. Ask the average person what an affiliate marketing program is and they’ll give you a vague description of something. It might not even be an Internet related description!

Affiliate marketing usually means that you lead people to a particular website that is tracked with the use of the URL and cookies. For everyone that buys a product or service that you led to the website, you get a commission.

On Monday night, I went and saw a pre-screening of The Social Network. This was on behalf of Mumbrella and Focal Attractions.

I have already posted about the Social Network preview here and I don’t want to give the story line away but I did enjoy the movie. It may not be what really happened and I am sure it was sensationalised as well.

Users browsing the Internet with their TV seems like it might be the next big other other than mobile Internet. Google TV is now here and Microsoft will be coming out with their version soon. Apple is re-launching their AppleTV product.

TV Optimisation
But is your website optimised to be viewed on the TV? There are many sizes of TVs from large 10 foot screens to 32 inch screens. Users are not sitting half a metre from their TV. They are often sitting 3 or 4 metres away from the TV.

I came across an excellent case study about the Old Spice viral campaign that has been doing the rounds for the past few months and I would like to share it with everyone -

Google Instant has now been rolled out in Australia. You may have noticed that search results start appearing as soon as you start typing. Each time you type another letter, the results are refreshed.

The biggest question in the world of search engine optimisation and website rankings is – How will this affect my search engine rankings and amount of traffic you receive?

Marissa Mayer, one of Google’s top executives was moved from Head of Products to Head of Location and Local Search. She has already started making changes with a great new improvement for local search results.

Previously, if you did a search for Pizza, you were assigned your location based on the information your ISP gave to Google. It was often inaccurate and it didn’t help the search results. I was located in Wollongong and a local Google search would often generate results for Sydney. Now that I am in Sydney, it would be a different part in Sydney.

The Social Network is a movie about the creator of Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg.

The movie has received mixed reviews in the US because the movie portrays Zuckerberg as someone who copied the idea. We all get ideas from somewhere but Zuckerberg created Facebook nad is now a multi-billionaire because of it.

“You don’t get 500 million friends without making some enemies”

Here’s the preview -

Nielsen has just released their third quarter report for 2010 showing the list of websites that are most visited by Australians.

There is an estimated 14.6 million regular Internet users in Australia with 17.8 million having some kind of access to the Internet.

Chances are that you visit many of the websites owned by the list of companies below. I’ve been to all of them over the past month myself.

According to Nielsen, the organisations with the biggest reach are:

1. Google 12.7m
2. Microsoft 11.412m
3. Facebook 9.063m
4. Telstra 7.274m
5. Yahoo! 6.909m
6. News Corp 6.904m
7. eBay 6.829m
8. Australian Federal Government 6.479m
9. Wikimedia Foundation 5.902m
10. Fairfax Digital 5.769m

• Domains Visited per Person 86
• Web Page Views per Person 2312
• Active Digital Media Universe 14,576,475
• Current Digital Media Universe Estimate 17,750,750

Books have been around for centuries and ebooks have changed the way many people read books.

Ebooks still lack that wow factor though and not truly taking advantage of technology.

Here’s a video that explains what we might see for the future of books

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

The Old Spice campaign has well and truly gone viral now and has teamed up with a viral veteran – Blendtec -

Do you advertise on Yahoo? Not as many people advertise on Yahoo and Bing which means cheaper rates for traffic compared to the sometimes over-competitive Google Adwords.

Yahoo Search attracts a different kind of traffic audience as well. Just like Bing users are sometimes more beginner types because they use Internet Explorer and do not know how to change their search engine preferences in their browser. They are just happy to use any search engine that is conveniently located in the browser.

Google has many products, not just search. This includes News, YouTube, Maps, Checkout, Chrome, Earth, Gmail, Picasa, Talk, Blogger, Gears, Buzz, Docs, iGoogle, Orkut, Wave, Latitude, Goggles, AdWords, AdSense  and the list goes on. Check out the full list here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

There are about 100 blogs that Google uses to keep everyone up-to-date with all the different products. I subscribe to about 20 of them! But no one place to go to get everything new so Google created Google New.

Internet Explorer 9 was launched by Microsoft last week and this week, Microsoft has launched the new version of Bing, the decision engine powered by HTML5.

You may not know this but nearly every website uses HTML version 4. The next generation of HTML, known as HTML5 is incredibly powerful. It gives developers a lot more flexibility in creating user friendly websites.

There really isn’t much funny stuff that goes on in search engines. It’s all about the numbers, ranking, results, money, return on investment etc.

It does get repetitive – believe me I should know!

That’s why I would like to share with you this video from the Comedy Channels’ The Colbert Report. It features a funny interview with Google’s CEO – Eric Schmidt.

Every professional needs to stay up-to-date with the latest news.

That is why I have composed a list of the 12 must read blogs for any serious marketing professional (excluding my own) -

1. Advertising – http://adsoftheworld.com
2. Branding -http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com
3. Blogging – http://problogger.net

Realestate.com.au have recently launched their new TV campaign to promote their website.

There are many other examples of online businesses promoting their website addresses on the TV such as WebJet.

What is Facebook Places?
Facebook Places brings location-based functionality to Facebook.

It allows you to easily share where you are, what you’re doing and the friends you’re with right from your mobile.

You can see who is in your area and catch up with your friends. You will never miss an opportunity to meet a friend when you were so close to them.

Google has done it again! Caffeine made the indexing of web pages a much quicker affair. New results are entered in the grand database very quickly how, often within hours instead of days and weeks.

Google’s new innovation is Instant Results. As you type your search query, the results are display. This means faster, quicker searching for everyone.

Here is a video from Google explaining it in a very easy to understand way -

What is Google Places?
Local business listings is very important in Google. If you do a local search which includes a place, town, city or local service, Google will display the local business box. That’s how important Google thinks local search results are.

What determines your Google Places Rank?
Everyone is wondering what the ranking factors for local search engine optimisation. Do you stuff your Google Places page with as many keywords as possible or what?

Here are the top 10 factors that determine your Google Places ranking – From Least important to most important -

Want to know what everyone else is searching for? Did you know that Google publishes the top search queries and it’s called Google Trends.

It is broken into two areas -

Hot Searches – This is a list of the fastest rising searches on Google – updated daily.

Hot Topics – This is a list of popular topics in the news, Twitter, FriendFeed and other messaging services. – updated hourly.

What is Local SEO?
You may be wondering what exactly local seo is and how it can help your business. ‘Local Search Engine Optimisation’ is getting your business listed at the top of the search engine when local searches are performed.

A local search is defined as a search including a location, city, suburb, town, place, country or a local service.

Google Adwords is the sponsorship links that you see on any Google search. They appear above the organic search results and in the right column. They can also appear in the Google  content nextwork.

I have created hundreds of campaigns using Adwords and optimised campaigns for a lot of customers.

Many of the campaigns created by small business owners often have the same mistakes appearing time and time again.

I have complied this list of the 10 most common mistakes that advertisers make when creating and running their Google Adwords campaigns.

The subtitle says it all – “The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide” and the author, John Jantsch is not kidding.

Many business owners I talk to tell me they don’t have time to do any business planning or marketing just isn’t my thing.

The bad news is that no one is going to do your business planning and marketing without involving you so you may as well understand how it works.

This is a wonderful introduction into the world of getting your business listed on the major search engines and business directories.

The book is from the US but the explanation of local search engine optimisation and Google Places information is great.

If you want a shortcut to the top of search engines, the local business listings in the major search engines may just help you.

If you do a local search, the major search engines may display a listing of local businesses.

WordPress is open source software and one of the major players for blog publishing software. This blog was created with WordPress as well as many of the largest blogs in the world.

WordPress 3.0 became available in June and is ready to download and install.

There are currently rumours floating around the Internet that Google may introduce a payment system for paid content.

What is Newspass
Newspass will be a micropayments system for viewing premium content. This premium content listing in the search engine result pages will be indicated with a Newspass icon. When you click on the link, your Newspass account will have the cost deducted from it.

The answer is GIMP!

GIMP is a free graphics program which is comparable to Adobe Photoshop. GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I am often asked what graphic programs are good to use for basic graphic design. GIMP is a pretty good candidate for this. It can even save files in Photoshop format.

Here is a list of videos that are on YouTube and Vimeo that are quickly gaining popularity.

#1 – Nike Football – Write the future – 16,000,000 views

What is a conversion tracker?
A conversion tracker is a piece of code that enables advertisers track the number of people who take a specific action.

How is this related to Facebook advertising?
When someone clicks on your ad on Facebook and you have installed the new tracking code on your website, you will now get the results of how many people took a particular action.

Split testing is a method used by search engine marketers to measure the effectiveness of changes to their campaigns.

A simple example would be running two ads with a different titles. The campaign may run for a week and the campaign manager will look at the results of the two ads including impressions, click through rate, conversions and cost per acquisition.

Google announced today this it has rolled out the biggest change in it’s search engine history. Fresh content will now be displayed much faster than ever before.

The project named Google Caffeine which was mentioned in August ’09 is now powering the world’s largest search engine – Google.