Technorati Tags: Buttons, Myzerr, Widgets

Groupon:

Groupon bands thousands of users together to get bulk discount deals from local businesses in various cities. They have managed the most successful execution of this strategy to date and have become profitable by taking a cut from each business that offers goods or services on the site. The ability for Groupon is to tap into the concept of ‘collective buying power’ is very valuable and makes Groupon a great company.

While Groupon are very good at using social media tools to build their database, they are not a social network and their growth is limited by a number of factors. Firstly, there are reportedly over 150 competitors to Groupon and copying the model is as easy as putting on sales people in a city and developing the software (I have heard of developers quoting under $5000). Secondly, because there is only one deal per day per city, the deal is based more on what offer the advertiser of the day has and this doesn’t necessarily apply to ‘me’. Finally, as a web business their network growth is tied to theiractivity and the principle of Metcalfe’s law does not apply. So in my opinion their long term value is limited by these factors of ease of competition, relevance and limited exponential growth opportunity.

Fourqsuare:

Foursquare is a location-based game and social networking website for mobile devices. Users “check-in” at venues on their mobile handset and they are then awarded points and sometimes “badges” for their activity. The company has received much attention because marketing campaigns with popular brands like Starbucks that allow for special offers and coupons to be promoted to users. In addition to benefits like checkin validation, in-store redemption, businesses can view stats on visitors and get detailed breakdown of their activity.

When compared with Groupon I believe that as a social network, Foursquare have a much brighter future. Their value is in the database of “check-in” activity and the ability potential advertisers will have to target promotions based on this activity. Like Facebook they do face issues around privacy and the use of this information, but the ability to promote time sensitive special deals liked to location is highly valuable provided deals are relevant to the user. When assessing long-term business value, (1) it’s difficult to copy Foursquare as their value is in the network and the “check-in” activity, (2) because of the volumes of data being collected, the promotions in Foursquare will have greater user relevance and (3) as a social network there is much greater opportunity for exponential growth of their network.

One limitation of Foursquare is the low average age of its’ users. As a consumer in my 30s i can think of many of my peers who “check-in” and use their service but with over a million checkins each day I’m sure that they are happy with their niche in the market.

Technorati Tags: Foursquare, Groupon, Local Business

Who could have imagined 2.5 years ago that Kevin Rudd would not be contesting the next federal election? And well done to Julia Gillard who is now our first female Australian Prime Minister. Time will tell how she performs in the role but the events of the last week have made me think more seriously about loyalty in politics.

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One definition of true loyalty I like is

Technorati Tags: Loyalty in Labour

Six months prior to the Alice.com launch they started using social media, company blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to connect with a list of key influencers.

Lead by Rebecca Thorman, the company developed a community of loyalists by targetting mom and frugal bloggers who provided input during the pre-launch phase and then on launch brought attention and grassroots credibility to the service.

The Alice team also offered incentives like discounts and coupons to select bloggers, so they could extend incentives to their readers to try the service.

In the first week after launch, Alice received 110 pieces of unique coverage and nearly 70,000 tweets. In early June, the pre-launch Alice.com site had 170,000 site visits — before anyone could even use the service.  At launch time in July, Alice.com’s traffic jumped to nearly 400,000 site visits.

All pretty amazing when you consider that Alice does not invest in advertising — this was all grassroots Social Media Marketing.

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Technorati Tags: Alice.com, Social Media Marketing, Web2.0 Expo

Five lessons from Web2.0 land:

1. Get your product out there; the common message from presenters is that it’s better to launch your website and get user feedback even if you feel your app isn’t perfect.
2. Location location; the launch of the iPad and many new mobile computing devices is opening up a host of new location-based services. Knowing what you do and where and when you do it, presents new and exciting opportunities around behaviorally targeted advertising. The most important part is ensuring buy in from the consumer.
3. Embrace Open API’s; Saw a great talk by Sam Ramji discussing the importance of having API’s to allow your services or brand to be sold through other websites. In his talk Sam talks about how retail outlets like Nike, The North Face and Maytag grew their businesses by allowing other successful retailers to sell their products. He then draws parallels to how an effective Open API strategy can have the same results for emerging Web2.0 sites.
4. Effectiveness of Social Media marketing; I saw a talk by Alice.com on how they used social media and blogging to generate enormous traffic in the lead-up to their launch. A good example of companies now using grassroots social media marketing to build a brand.
5. Have a great product and deliver value; all the most popular applications offer real value over incumbent solutions. The simplest rule in business still applies.

Technorati Tags: Web2.0Expo

I think people that are focused on ‘books’ miss the point and this is why:

• The iPad is not an electronic book,
• It’s not a photo album.
• It’s not a device for reading newspapers or magazines.
• It’s not a video or YouTube viewer.
• The iPad is not a games console.
• and it’s not a music player.
• And the iPad it’s not a presenting device.

Technorati Tags: iPad, Marketing Tips

So what is Myzerr?
Quite simply, this: Myzerr is a virtual meeting place, an online platform that connects communities and users with each other and with businesses using a social object – coupons, in this instance, or what we call ‘Zerrs.’ There are three aspects to Myzerr: individuals, communities of which they are members, and businesses of which the individuals and indeed the communities are, or could be, customers. So Myzerr is where all three can cooperate for the good of each. More…

Free Promotion For Business:
You can promote your business and it’s FREE so please sign in and add your business today. More…

Discounts for Community Groups:
Myzerr allows you to setup a page for your group and then invite businesses to give your group members ‘member only’ discounts. Setup a community discount program for your group today and it’s FREE. More…

If you notice any problems, please tell us. If you think it’s awesome, tell others and forward this email to all your friends!

Best regards,

Slade

For updates please follow Myzerr on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Business Promotion, Group Benefits, Myzerr

1. The most important factor is good quality content. Make sure that what you write is new and original.
2. Do some keyword research. A great tool is Market Samurai but if you don’t have the time engage an SEO expert.
3. Use H1 and H2 tags for headers and sub-headers
4. Alt or image tags on website pages.
5. Have a custom 404 Page error page that will help users navigate your site and ensure you don’t lose traffic. Here are some great 404 page examples.
6. Use social networking links, feeds and email.
7. Include title tags, meta descriptions and keyword tags on all pages.
   

Many of the elements require coding changes so it’s a good idea to pass this list onto your developer as part of your site maintenance or redevelopment.

Technorati Tags: Market Samurai, Search, SEO

Not much more to add…just have a read!

Free E-book

Technorati Tags: eBook, Seth

In the presentation Mark highlights the movement from Web1.0, with links and banner ads being the path to revenue, to Web2.0 with currency and monitization coming from SEO, SEM and Google Ad Sense and Ad Words. He goes on to describe new Web3.0 Third business plan of the internet that is generating revenue from the “app economy”.

In this app ecomony, Mark talks about how sellers of the future will increasingly use social media and friends/network sharing for sales of product and become less reliant on Google ad clicks. I believe that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg both in relation to Google type advertising and social media generated sales and that the market for both approaches is still in it’s infancy.

Technorati Tags: Mark Pincus, Social Media, Web2.0