The Forrester Research report “US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2011 – 2016” states: marketing dollars are shifting away from traditional forms of advertising (TV, radio and print) to various forms of online and interactive venues. Interactive is now cannibalizing traditional media.

Search Marketing leads overall Interactive Spend as more and more companies embrace Search Marketing tools such as PPC (pay per click) Advertising, and SEO (search engine optimization).

Forrester points out that 70% of marketers are already utilizing social media (Facebook) in various forms. Most of these companies have only “dipped” their toe into social media marketing. The next move is to monitor user activity, listen to what consumers are saying, increase engagement, and increase brand loyalty.

Mobile Marketing is gaining considerable momentum. 45% of the adult population has a smartphone or PDA with full browser capability. Apple iPhones and Google Android devices are leading the way as consumers become more comfortable using their PDA’s for practically everything – map directions, couponing, product reviews, and online purchasing.

This is indeed a major challenge for businesses because the marketing strategies they’ve executed on for the last 30 years may be totally redundant within 2 years (if they aren’t already).

The World Cup of Soccer is the largest single sporting event in the world and the opening ceremonies were sponsored by Adidas. What was particularly interesting was that the advertisement displayed on the TV screen as follows:

This was the first time that a major sponsor had used its social media page as the focal point or  marquee. It was a defining point in the advertising world.

This paradigm shift will no doubt create new business opportunities – and a  few casualties along the way.

So, unless you’ve been completely disconnected for the last few weeks, you will have likely heard about Google+. This is Google’s latest attempt at breaking through in the very competitive and rapidly expanding social media realm. It’s not their first attempt mind you, but we won’t go into too much detail about Wave, Buzz and their other… let’s call them.. experiments.

They have quite a lot more invested in this project though, and have gone as far as planning to rename the incredibly popular Picasa and Blogger websites to Google Photos and Google Blogs, respectively. Last time we looked this change hadn’t gone through, but it’s planned to happen during the public launch of Google+, since it is still in invite-only beta stage.

Getting an invite however, is as easy as asking one of the over 20 million current users (as of July 19th, 2011)  for one of their unlimited invites. I had approximately 50 coworkers, family members and friends up and running within a few days. NOTE : In fact, leave a comment on this blog post and I would be happy to extend an invite.

After 10 days of frequent use, I have had a great deal of fun using Google+ but it’s not perfect. Here are some of my Pros/Cons.

Great features of Google+ 

• Integration With Other Google Tools.
  When you  want to share a video on Facebook, you need to either have the link ready, or upload the actual video to Facebook. With Google+ it not only features the option to add a video link, but you can also search and post directly from Youtube, or add videos from your cellphone (provided you are using the Instant Upload feature).
  
• That Amazing Notifications Bar.
  The updated toolbar that is present in nearly every Google tool has deep integration of Google+ Notifications. Not only can you check your Google+ notifications while reading your Gmail, but you can comment or +1 the comments without having to visit the Google+ site itself.

  

• Already A Google user? You’re Ready To Go.
  I have been a Google user (or… Google super nerd, Google Poster Boy, etc., depending on who you ask) for as long as I can remember. My phone is running Android, I have been using Gmail forever, my Contacts have been stored on Google’s servers since I got my phone, my Calendars, both personal and professional are, well…. you get the picture. Anyways, upon setting up my Google+ account, I was greeted with a list of contacts taken from my Google Contacts, making it very easy to invite everyone. My Picasa photos were automatically linked up to share, and I can only imagine what else will be enabled in the coming months.
• The Mobile App Might Be Basic, But It’s Already Great
  Last time I checked, mobile usage is growing. Having an app to compliment the great online service seemed obvious and Google doesn’t disappoint. Nearly everything you can do on the browser version can be done on the Google+ mobile app. In fact, the ability to have photos, videos and chats are makes even more sense on a mobile device, while you’re out and about.

Room For Improvement 

While not so much technical aspects of the service itself, there are potential roadblocks that could severely hinder any possibility for future success of Google+.

• Where is everyone?
  At last count, I had 75 people in my circles, however it seems as if only 3 people are actually using it. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely thrilled with every word they type (Hopefully they are reading this), but it would be nice to see a more engaged group. I’m sure this is something that will happen over time but it puts a damper on an otherwise very solid platform.
• The big blue elephant in the room.
  With Facebook amazingly continuing to increase its userbase to now over 700 million, it seems that nothing can possibly get in its way. Google doesn’t just have a hill to climb, it has to find a way to catch up with a speeding train with no signs of slowing down.
• No Business Support (Yet.)
  There is an ‘entity’ request form available for businesses, but until then there is no sign of how the business accounts will appear to the public. One of the issues I’ve found with Facebook is the occasional business account that posts dozens of times a day, cluttering the news feed (my apologies if you feel that way about us!). Keeping business accounts separate is a great idea.

Danielle K. a grade 8 student at Toronto’s Hodgeson Senior Public School afflicted with Epilepsy wanted to raise awareness and money for a cause she intimately believes in – finding a cure for Epilepsy. Danielle and her grade 8 classmates created a campaign they affectionately called “Purple Palooza” which would do just that – raise money for Epilepsy research. Danielle’s class (and teacher) organized a fundraising campaign that would make Donald Trump of  ”The Apprentice” proud. The students collaborated on a campaign that included several business elements such as: idea brainstorming, strategy, branding, marketing, and tactical execution.

Additional support by teachers, school administrators, and volunteers contributed to the overall  success of the campaign, raising over $1200 in an effort to increase awareness of Epilepsy and to help Epilepsy Canada reach their research goals.

Enabling the power of social media, the students created their own blog to track the progress of the campaign which created incremental visibility beyond the class to include other classes, grades, and parental connections. One of the students indicated that the campaign had stalled midway – but once social media (blogging and Facebook)was utilized – the campaign took on a life of its own resulting in a positive outcome.

Bill Hutchison – CTV’s  news anchor and Honorary Spokesperson for Epilepsy Canada, was there to say a few words and commend the students for their remarkable effort. Gary Collins, Managing Partner of 4Growth and Epilepsy Canada Board Member, was also suitably impressed and accepted the cheque  on behalf of Epilepsy Canada.

The students (and school administrators) all shared in the success of the campaign. Our hats are off to the Purple Palooza team as they are a very “enterprising” group of kids who demonstrated a strong passion and belief in a worthwhile cause.

View some of the snaps from the event below.

If you’ve read online offers peddling any number of ‘enhancing’ pills, NBA swag or opportunities to purchase only the most affordable iPads online whilst perusing a forum or the comments section of a blog, then the purveyor of said website is probably in need of some measure of controling spam. The common go-to controls for such precautionary measures are called CAPTCHA, or their adorable little brother SAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA is an absurd acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart” and in its essence is a humanity test; kind of like the one administered in the 1982 movie Blade Runner, but with considerably less suspense. The hope behind CAPTCHA is to stymie a spambot by confounding it with a question or task that rudimentary bot software can’t figure out, but is still something a human with fully-functional fuzzy logic can solve easily.

The most typical implementation of CAPTCHA is through a slightly obfuscated pictorial rendering of a word, such as this disfigurement of my native language below:

I have a few issues with CAPTCHA controls and I suspect most people do as well, upon reflection. On more than one level, they’re kind of offensive. Visually, they’re ugly, and they confuse many users new to the Internet (such as my wizened parents). They rely primarily on visual perception, so people with disabilities are dependent upon developers implementing the responsible version of the CAPTCHA control (such as the Internet’s most popular CAPTCHA tool: reCAPTCHA).

So. Is there a requirement for CAPTCHA or CAPTCHA-like controls on a website at all? Think about this for a moment.

• People hate CAPTCHAs
• Bots hate CAPTCHAs (they’re irrefutably effective…for a while)
• They add another layer of frustration between “spam intention” and the successful “delivery of spam”
• They ruin the design of a page and are a general annoyance for all involved

So when, if ever, does one actually use a CAPTCHA control?

Here’s my best answer:

You use them in a “lesser of two evils” kind of way…and every conditional point here is a potential deal breaker, if it doesn’t check out:

Implement CAPTCHA in any instance where: the number of users on your site, who you may potentially lose because they are offended by spam, is greater than the number of conversions (where conversion is measured as the accepting of user-based website content contribution(value)) your site stands to lose due to CAPTCHAs road-blocking said ease of content contribution delivery.

Or in a less wordy way: use CAPTCHAs on user creation forms or in public forums and then ONLY when that forum allows anonymous posting. Otherwise don’t. You are not a focused target for spammers.

If you roll a CAPTCHA onto a site for any other reason you are potentially limiting conversions and weakening your ROI. Period.

Do not use CAPTCHA on:

• Login forms
• Email forms, where the email is delivered to a single business representative (i.e. NOT a mailing list)
• Authenticated user accounts
• When you have a moderator vetting value from trash before content is published to a user base.

My main point here is that CAPTCHAs have very limited applications to begin with.

But it gets worse.

Despite their limited practical application, CAPTCHAs are less and less viable with each passing day. Since, theoretically, CAPTCHAs are only routinely beaten by a human, all spammers need do to subvert the system is apply an abundance of (presumably affordable) human brainpower. Enter India.

A 10-second Google search will reveal “DeCaptcher” and “Death by Captcha”, which offers an army of human CAPTCHA solvers to you for as little as $1.39-$2.00 USD per 1000 CAPTCHAs, with typical response times in fewer than 30 seconds. For “numbers people” these services also offer reporting on failures, redeemable for credit; however, success rates are typically so high that most do not bother with this, erm…courtesies.

These services work really well with the most common types of CAPTCHA on the Internet, namely reCAPTCHA (remember them?), with slightly lower success rates on some more difficult CAPTCHA styles such as the kind used on the Wikimedia sites.

See where this is going?

I look at the rise and fall of CAPTCHAs as akin to Steve Jobs’ recent denunciation of MobileMe (to be superseded by iCloud). It’s an inevitable replacement to a languishing predecessor. CAPTCHAs had their time when most spam was being blocked successfully; there was a short period where we tolerated the inconvenience and CAPTCHAs enjoyed a bloom of adoption. Then the global economy kicked in and it became affordable for humans and bots to work together in relative harmony whilst spamming the planet: a marriage, of sorts, between the application of human intellect and the toilings of a looping subroutine…each fulfilling their collaborative role to annoy the world.

In case you haven’t heard about NFC, chances are you will very soon. NFC stands for Near Field Communication and is finding its way into mobile devices across the world. NFC is typically performed between two devices, the target device being anything from a keyfob, to a card or even a sticker. It is done at very close range, very similar to the PayPass technology that Mastercard embraced a few years ago. (And which I LOVE!)

The relationship between NFC and mobile phones is a match made in heaven. Don’t want to carry your credit card with you? Just tap your cellphone on the reader and you’re good to go. Interested in finding out more info on a store, or a product? If there is an NFC ‘tag’ available, simply tap it with the phone and get wisked away to the company website, or get a coupon. The results are very similar to the solution offered by QR Codes, but with less work required by the end user.

During the Google I/O event recently, Foursquare allowed for NFC-fueled check-ins to help showcase the features of the technology (Nexus S phones are the first widely available devices with NFC built in).

Read more about the potential for NFC below :

• Fourteen Ways NFC Will Let Your Phone Replace Your Wallet (And More)

For a great, detailed (and lengthy!) video, view below from the recent Google I/O conference :

View Our Related Posts :

• Google Buzz : R.I.P.
• Social Media Marketing

Released to the public in early 2010, Buzz was Google’s first true attempt at entering the social media realm.

It integrated a number of different services into one stream. These services included Twitter and Flickr as well as well as the range of Google products such as YouTube, Blogger, Reader, Latitude, Picasa and others. It had a lot of potential, and seemed like a great way for Google to get their foot in the door. I mean, why wouldn’t it work?

You may have noticed I’m referring to Buzz in the past tense. This is because in my eyes, and in the eyes of many others… it’s dead. There were even reports of it being dead right out of the gate.

The reasons it died so quickly? Well for starters, at the time of its release privacy was a bigger concern than ever before. Facebook had a similar issue which as you may remember, caused the massive user exodus (well, that was the plan anyways). However in Google’s case, they managed to display user contacts publicly, without consent from the user. This was later fixed, but not before major damage was done.

Also, it never really had an identity of its own. Launched as an extension of sorts to the incredibly popular Gmail, it never seemed like it could stand on its own two legs as a social media platform. Getting all of your friends to setup ANOTHER new account also didn’t help. Sure, you could integrate your existing Google account with Buzz, but it still wasn’t easy enough for quick adoption.

In addition to this, major tech blogs have removed Buzz entirely from their social media efforts, receiving almost no complaints. The service has simply failed to find a footing in the already overcrowded ‘sharing’ market.

The one remaining light in the otherwise dark abyss that is Google Buzz (yikes, that sounds harsh…) is its integration with Google Maps on mobile devices. I found the interface to be very intuitive and couldn’t believe it when I saw others using it nearby. Used solely as a Google Maps and Google Latitude extension, I truly believe Buzz could catch on. But Google needs to figure out where it fits in their master plan.

I applaud Google for trying new things, and even if they fail, they manage to create something new or put their own unique spin on an existing idea. We saw it before with Wave, and now with Buzz. There are always elements of their new tools that can be implemented within other services, so I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

Read some of our related posts :

• “Say No To Spam!” – Regards, Google
• Is Mobile Marketing Important?

As you may have heard, Google recently received a bit of flack for ‘allowing’ spam to rear its ugly head into a handful of search phrases. In one case, a surprisingly large number of vague search terms that were all returning JC Penney as the number one (or very high) result. Terms such as ‘furniture’ or ‘home decor’. Quite a few people noticed something fishy was going on, so an investigation was shortly underway.

This isn’t specific to JC Penney, as a large number of other websites have partaken in similar tactics, and a few years ago BMW was caught red handed (or, as an SEO might say… black-handed…. *ahem*… ok sorry, that was bad).

What has happened to make this possible, is that websites known as “link farms”, which feature highly irrelevant content, have been used to generate seemingly genuine links to a specific website. These links appear to be highly relevant to the destination website, for example: a link may appears as Deals On Shoes, which when clicked, would link to www.Sears.com. However, this link is often surrounded by highly irrelevant text offering nothing of value to visitors, and only serving the purpose of artificially increasing the domain authority for www.Sears.com. If 500 very weak websites link to one website, they can artificially increase the website’s value to search engines, whereas only 10 very high quality, incredibly relevant websites offering links could theoretically produce a similar result (however, are VERY difficult to attain, this the reason some search firms might tend to shy away from it).

Google, who are always striving to provide the most relevant and highest quality search results for its users, has taken a hard stance against these link farms and as of March 8th, have eliminated more than 1 million of them from their search index. This has caused a very large stir in a number of search results and has effected some legitimate search results, both positively and negatively. While it is indeed an uphill battle, it is one that must be done, as hundreds of thousands of websites will, over time, hopefully be rewarded for offering more relevant, quality information for web users worldwide.

Glacier Digital is very proud to announce a new partnership with Epilepsy Canada. Glacier Digital will be providing a brand new online presence complete with their very own Aumbry Content Management System (CMS). Not only that, but the service and tools provided by Glacier Digital will be free of charge.

Glacier Digital has already received some kind words from the Epilepsy Canada Board of Directors :

Try to imagine our pleasure when we were informed of your fantastic gift to bring epilepsy.ca into the next generation.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, Epilepsy Canada would like to extend our sincere thanks and gratitude to the executives at Glacier-Digital for their generous gift “Creating a New Website for and on behalf of Epilepsy Canada”.

Please let us know if we can be of any assistance and we truly look forward to working with you.

They will have instant, real time access to content changes, image and media uploads, social media tools, search engine optimization, and will be able to drastically reduce online administration time used.

We at Glacier Digital are all very proud and excited to begin work on the new online presence for Epilepsy Canada!

B2B SEO requirements are quite different versus B2C SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is changing the way companies market their products. According to Vanessa Fox, author of “Marketing in the Age of Google”, Search Marketing (which didn’t exist 10 years ago) is dramatically impacting traditional methods of advertising, brand awareness, and new customer acquisition causing many companies pain and discomfort. The companies that understand this new form of marketing will have competitive advantage over their ‘laggard’ competitors who continue with the status quo who still may rely on yellow pages, outdated websites, and traditional advertising for awareness.

One of the key growth areas for the Internet is B2B (Business to Business). It is popular misconception to think that SEO is just for companies marketing in the B2C sector. SEO for B2B is extremely important and is gaining considerable traction and attention in online business circles.

Differences

Typically in the B2C sector, the sales cycle for purchasing a product (electronic device) is relatively short – anywhere from three minutes to three hours. The decision process is relatively simple – online search, cost, availability, looks great – therefore I need it! – click on the shopping cart and the product is billed and shipped.

However, companies that market to other companies encounter more complex purchase attributes namely:

1. Engagement of Multiple Decision Makers
2. Longer Buying Cycles
3. Corporate Reputations
4. Research on Capabilities, other product lines
5. Case Studies – reliance on 3rd party research assessments
6. Demonstrations (ie. video clips on new manufacturing process)
7. Tradeshow Attendance

Typically the prospective B2B customer is looking for alternatives and is driven more by “risk avoidance” than price, when selecting new vendors.

It is important for companies who operate in a B2B environment to fully understand their prospective customer base. Companies need to know what these prospects will be searching for and make the necessary adjustments in their SEO keyword search and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising programs.

The buying process is longer; however, when a new customer is acquired the return can be in the millions of dollars.

In summary, companies who compete in a B2B marketplace (huge) – need to consider a sound B2B SEO coverage program to ensure their online digital footprint is attracting new customers and retaining their existing customers.

So some of you may have noticed a rather substantial change on Google.com today. As I began to type in the search box, something interesting started to happen.  Instead of having to click Search or press Enter, the window immediately shifted to a search result page, almost seamlessly.

This could have an enormous impact on searches, changing the way users find information and relevant results. Google however,  stresses :

While the presentation of the search results may change, our most important advice to webmasters remains the same: Users want to visit pages with compelling content and a great user experience.

Impressions are measured in three ways with Google Instant:

1. Sites are displayed in search results as a response to a user’s completed query (e.g. by pressing “enter” or selecting a term from autocomplete). This is the traditional model.
   With Google Instant, Google also measures impressions in these new cases:
2. A user begins to type a term on Google and clicks on a link on the page, such as a search result, ad, or a related search.
3. A user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

Users may be more inclined to use Google.com directly for searches from now on, instead of toolbars, or browser URL bars. I know I will.