Interactive Marketing – Yenius Interactive Marketing

Plagiarism on the Internet

November 1, 2012 by Lisa Chang Leave a Comment

When confronted with the idea that blogging is part of the overall online marketing process, some business owners look for ways to make this simple. And, it occurs to them that they can just research materials and then present it in their blogs.

But, of course, as we all know that’s plagiarism.

Finding Plagiarism

The first thing to do if you feel you have been plagiarized or you feel someone has been adding plagiarized materials onto your website is to go to Copyscape to check whether it is plagiarism. You can easily copy & paste a paragraph into Copyscape to learn if it is plagiarized material.

Next, use the wayback machine on the internet. It keeps an archive of the internet. You can use it to show that you had the content on the internet before the plagiarist. You can use this to show the plagiarist as well as other parties who could all assist you in sending your message to the plagiarist.

Contacting the Plagiarist

Contact the plagiarist. Identify the plagiarized materials by providing the URL & the materials plagiarized. Provide a timeframe for removal and what you will do if it is not removed by that timeframe. Include as your activities that you’ll contact the hosting company, you will initiate legal action and that you will address this via the search engines.

Be professional. Ask for the removal. Thank them for respecting your work when the removal is complete.

Contact the Hosting Company

So, if you’re at this point, most people feel the next step might be legal action but legal action can be costly and doesn’t need to be the next step necessarily. Contact the hosting company to identify the copyright infringement just as you did with the plagiarist. Some of the larger hosts may have a process and while it can be cumbersome, it is definitely less costly than legal action.

In the US, the hosting companies want to follow the DCMA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which implements 2 of the treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Contact Others About Copyright Infringement

If the plagiarist has been plagiarizing your information, they have likely been doing this to other people as well. So, contact the others who can also go through these same motions. This will send the message loudly and clearly and from so many different directions, this will definitely alert the website owner.

Contacting the Search Engines

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo & Bing account for over 90% of the search results according to NetMarketshare. If the plagiarist is not responding to requests, hosting company notifications or legal threats, they are likely dependent on the content to develop traffic and business as most business owners / website owners have become. Cutting the plagiarist off from new website visitors is a great way to affect their revenue, business image or communications in a financially impactful way.

Report to Google DCMA, Yahoo DCMA and Microsoft DCMA.

No Real Value in Plagiarism / Duplicating Information on the Internet

I’ve had a few people tell me that they want to just cut & paste what someone else has put together and then reference it. In real marketing strategy terms, there’s no value in this. Firstly, people are looking for unique branded communications in the online community you’re building. If you want to research and re-write in your own way, great! All the more power to you.

Secondly, the search engines and particularly Google does not want to rank duplicate information. They want to rank unique information of high value to people. Since some of the key reasons for creating an online communications strategy includes:

Creating a branded Online Communications Strategy
Building an Online Community or Network from which you can develop new customers
Getting good page ranks so your Online Communications Strategy has a further reach

It’s important to do this right and to do this well.

So, even if you’re thinking that an easy way to develop content is to use other work and referencing it, think again. You won’t get into Google’s good graces or get the page rankings you seek the way that you think.

What We All Really Want

We don’t need to understand every single algorithm that Google uses to know that we want to see business owners develop real content, truly engaging branded communications and to see truly great websites / companies appear at the top of the search engine results for us to find and use in our daily lives.

As the business owner, this may seem overwhelming to be able to get these results. But, the truth is that figuring out how to talk about our business in different, unique and various ways broadens how effective we are in communicating our true unique value proposition.

Also, hire a trusted Interactive Marketing firm to outsource all the nitty details of internet marketing while making sure all the t’s are crossed, all the i’s are dotted and maximizing your ROI on your branded online communications strategy.

Upcoming blog – how to enhance your SMO – social media optimization.

Copyright Infringement & Plagiarism

August 6, 2012 by Lisa Chang Leave a Comment

To do well in any online marketing program, I have constantly expressed to clients as well as prospective clients that unique content is extremely important.

Some people I meet start working on ways to turn this task into a more productive and less onerous task for themselves by considering ways to leverage other people’s ideas. What I’ve always told people is that plagiarism on the internet is considered a no-no and can be penalized in a number of ways including getting your website blocked from listing well as well as prospective legal ramifications which are becoming more prevalent these days.

Yesterday, Anton Vickerman was convicted on two counts of copyright infringement by linking to copyright materials and illegal content in the form of copyrighted media. Some interesting questions do prevail as Anton Vickerman made a lot of money on advertising around valuable media content. While often many others are not making money from the links, even if the content is not hosted at your website as most YouTUBE and other videos are not, it’s important to assure that the content is open for sharing versus copyrighted materials.

In most cases, a link to another article or YouTUBE results in credit to the other party hosting the content. For most small business people, a link is a compliment to introduce content we appreciate in some way.

A lot of people ask me about copying content and providing a reference to the source elsewhere on the internet. From this recent court case, I continue to agree that this is not acceptable as there starts to become a financial / marketing benefit to the website owner even if a reference to the original source is provided.

Some great ways to work with content you truly appreciate include writing your own opinions or perspective on the topic or idea but reference some well-written content on the subject using an outbound link to their content so the owner gets the benefit of your link. In this way, as website owners, we achieve a number of online goals:

We continue to develop our communication or voice – brand.
We add our own thoughts to topics making us relevant to follow which is one of our primary online marketing goals.
We play respectfully on the internet and give credit to other deserving content producers making us valuable content producers as well. We become shareable so our reach can be expanded by others looking to appreciate our work.

Our online marketing promotion reach expands when we create unique content because people will link to unique content. We do ourselves a disservice when we do otherwise. And, more than that, we also stay out legal trouble.

Let’s do ourselves a huge service and get further with our online promotions. Build our own brands instead of shortcutting and leveraging other people’s content which gets us little to nothing – or worse.

Become an Expert in Online or Internet Marketing

June 14, 2012 by Lisa Chang Leave a Comment

For the most part, I work with small business owners to single person entrepreneurs. I love working with this audience because personally, it’s fulfilling to see business owners come into their own and become recognized in a way that’s quite direct.

A lot of the things we work on together directly impact their bottom line. By no means do I attribute their success to my work for them. For the most part, I just make all their web and social media assets make sense as a promotion engine to increase awareness and visibility of their business. Most people know this as traffic to their website.

For some entrepreneurs, it’s difficult to afford a copywriting budget for a ghost writer to help create blogs. Even to assist in an editorial way can sometimes be outside a single entrepreneur’s budget. So, for many people for better or worse, they become their own blogger which is great whenever that is possible. In fact, when you can do this for yourself, I highly recommend it.

Now, typically as people go, we can only become an expert in our own niche or industry. We can’t do it all. So, when it comes to working with an interactive marketing specialist, it’s a good idea to work on the expertise of your business, practice or industry. So many times, we’re led to believe that we can learn it all. Now, we can learn some of it, but not all. Similarily, I can learn how to diagnose my own hang ups by reading a self-help book, but I won’t be a psychotherapist by any stretch of the imagination.

For content development or writing whether for a website or a blog is a large portion of the overall work involved. Whether we do the writing ourselves or we need a copywriter involved in the process, blogging is about expressing our passions for our calling, the breadth and depth to which we understand our profession and an opportunity to share with others. The people who really appreciate what we do become our customers whether they sit back and read for a long while or end up hiring us for our expertise.

In fact, in my estimation, content development can often take about 2/3 of the overall effort of a basic informational website or blog. So, if you really want to become an expert in Online or Internet Marketing, learn how to share your passions, educate people on the realities of your profession and share or give back as much as you can through your blogging. People are attracted to our passion, enthusiasm and our commitment to the pursuit of our chosen calling.

The rest, well, you can hire someone like me to help you make your website, social media and all your other internet assets make sense as a promotion engine for your business. Of course, I help people achieve outstanding results and keep them on track with their marketing program. So, I love being the 1/3 in people’s lives!

Are you Adapting to Interactive Marketing?

May 5, 2011 by Lisa Chang Leave a Comment

Are you not yet sure that Interactive Marketing is the way to go? Well, a recent study by Forrester Research, Marketing Technology Adoption 2011 shows just where both SMB and Enterprise businesses (over 1,000 employees) stand in terms of adoption of this interactive marketing realm.

Interestingly enough, Technology Leaders outpace Technology Followers even though it’s a close split down the middle between the two. Here’s how it breaks down:

Early Adopters 21%
Fast Followers 32%
Average Adopters 27%
Laggards 20%

The largest group of us are Fast Followers meaning that if we see a proven technology working in another industry, we will try to apply it to our own industry. Early adopters often adopt emerging technologies. Average Adopters want to see it work in their own industry. Laggards, well, they only adopt tried and true technologies.

Now, the true Customer Intelligence professionals amongst us are focused on some key themes. Of course, a larger portion of the 137 respondents came from Enterprise firms so they are skewed a little more towards Enterprise firms than SMB firms. But, here’s how it breaks down:

Branding – Improving the online customer experience
Overall Brand Management – multiple online channels and multiple traditional channels
Measurement – programming to measure and track; customer intelligence is key
Embracing new channels – adoption throughout the business is no easy task
Data Management – Integrating offline, online and social data

Now, what are we good at and where do we want to go? Well, the survey indicates that people are really adopting some of the best and trying to adopt where things will blossom most.

The Top Three areas of Adopted Technologies are definitely:

Web Analytics (Measurement) – 84%
Email Delivery – 69%
Content Management – 53%

Now, it’s interesting that the most highly adopted marketing technologies are the ones which can be measured most readily.

Next, here’s where we would like to go as with branding & marketing. The Top Five Areas where we would like to Adopt Marketing Technologies are:

Mobile Technologies – 30%
Customer experience management/session recording – 23%
On-site behavioral targeting – 21%
Listening platforms – 20%
Online testing – 19%

Clearly, marketing professionals are interested in delivering brand experiences, being able to monitor those experiences and measure them too. So, nothing too surprising, but if you haven’t been adopting these marketing technologies, know that you are not the only one with challenges in measuring results

Seek out Interactive Marketing professionals, like ourselves, since part of our job is to put measurement in your programs and help you learn where to develop a healthier brand image and an increased audience, no matter what size of business today.

Website Conversion or Landing Pages

April 14, 2011 by Lisa Chang Leave a Comment

We know that good landing or conversion pages will get us leads from our website. But, it’s just the tip of the iceberg in the entire lead conversion process. It’s the point at which people are willing to buy or give information about themselves in exchange for what we offer.

For many B2C customers, the offer may be to buy an item online. For B2B customers, typically our sales process is longer and more complicated. The conversion may be any number of things from an offer to provide some complimentary but informative insight paper, demo, webinar, presentation or trial offer. And, each item would signify a different level of commitment to the sales or buying process for that website visitor.

When our offer is valuable, we can often get people to identify themselves as being someone interested in these issues, getting clarity on the challenges and the potential solutions to solve them.

Now, how much indentifying information do we ask people to share? It is known that we get more people to an offer if we ask for less information. Also, if our offer is very strong, then we can often get away with asking for more indentifying information. The more valuable our offer, the more willing someone will be to offer their indentifying information. On the other hand, if it is sales leads, often, the sales department would prefer to ask for less information in favour of getting more results or leads.

Balance the amount of identifying questions vis-a-vis the value of the offer in order to optimize the quality of the leads. It’s not just volume but quality which will make your sales department productive and producing the optimal sales results. Also, better qualifying information will help sales people prioritize and prepare for the follow up sales call. And, in the long run, the marketing department will have improved insights into future campaigns which will yield the same or better results.

Most important to remember about conversion pages is that it is just the tip of the iceberg. There is an entire process that goes the conversion page. For instance, typically questions should focus on the process of how people will get to the conversion page and how we will handle that potential prospect once they have visited the conversion page or identified themselves.

So, we know that people don’t magically appear at a conversion page. We need to get them to the landing page. The first question is how are we attracting the prospective visitor to our conversion offer? What is our offer? The offer is very important and often stumps most business owners and marketing staff. We’ll have to talk about how to come up with the offer in another post.

Once we do have offer firmly in place, we build the conversion page and optimize the conversion offer page itself. Then, often, we also want general visitor traffic to the website to become aware of the offer. The more general visitor traffic to the website, the more opportunities we have to lead people to the conversion page. Notice that we need to lead people to the conversion page. What’s the enticement to do that? How might we do that?

What else factors into whether or not we identify ourselves? Well, simply people must trust our brand. People will likely investigate the website so how we present ourselves on other pages will have a lot to do with it!

Now, people may not always enter through the home page. In fact, a website with a lot of traffic tend to have a variety of high performing entrance points to the website. So, if your site isn’t chock full of enticing entry pages, that’s a good starting point for assuring you have a good quantity of potential prospects. The stronger your traffic and page rankings, the more likely your conversion page will attract visitors directly.

If typical direct marketing conversion rates are any indicator, then a 1-3% conversion rate is possible with a good marketing website. For a spectacular campaign, you can receive more of a conversion but often this is related to a recognized brand name which has done a good job communicating its brand.

Next, once someone completes the conversion page, then what happens? Is it just a sales follow up process? How is this tracked? Do we have an online marketing follow up process as well? An online follow up is a good way to assure we don’t lose people in the process. Sales people get busy. Marketing people are looking for new visitors. But, who assures that people who have started down the process can continue the process.

Often, the number reason for low sales is not enough follow up by sales people. While they are busy doing what they are trained to do best – close the sale, we need to continue to keep our eye on the ball and assure that prospect follow up does not go amiss.

Add some opportunities to keep the connection alive. Ask them to Receive the Newsletter, ask them to LIKE the Facebook Fan Page, Follow on Twitter or Connect on LinkedIn. Obviously, signing up for an email newsletter is the largest commitment a website visitor could make and the most valuable. Tracking a prospects buying behaviour is also much more insightful through an email newsletter campaign.

To gain credibility, assure the email newsletter is an engaging and informative source of content so people will be attracted to sign up or follow. Remember, the value you provide to prospects and customers in your offers must be commensurate to the value you are asking to receive as a business owner, marketer or sales manager.

As you can see, the conversion or landing page is a large consideration in any lead generation process. Those who will be successful are those people who create a process or system. The conversion page is the actual point of engagement but for overall success, make sure you look at it as part of an overall lead conversion or generation program.

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