Posts tagged grow
Digital Asset Management Strategies to Grow Your Audience
Jan 31st
Digital marketing optimization is more than just optimizing the media and content for search engine rankings. Your digital asset manager can leverage every asset to gain a wider audience and opportunities for sharing and linking to your content.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Like a Gangly 8-Year-Old, the Mobile Web Needs to Grow Up
Jan 27th
Well, here we are in Twentytwelve. Supposedly it’s the “year of the mobile” and all of our predictions about how we are going to use our mobile phones will finally come true.
Although I believe this year will be a pivotal point in the history of mobile technology, we’ve got a long way to go. Currently the mobile Web is like a gangly eight year old who, when you gaze upon you sense feelings of annoyance, intrigue and hope for a better future. We’ve all been there and it ain’t pretty.
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Web is immature and not growing up. To be clear, I am referring to the mobile Web browsing experience, the Web that will make its natural evolution from being viewed on large desktop screens to one viewed primarily on smaller mobile devices.
When browsing the mobile Web you will find the experience is quite unpleasant since most sites are not optimized for the small screen. If we are going to soon experience a mobile utopia full of simplicity and elegance, things need to drastically change. My hope is just as the immature young person seems to shoot to adulthood quicker than you blink your eye, our mobile experience will transform significantly this year.
The Mobile Web Is Annoying
Mobile computing through smartphones and tablets is growing four times faster than the PC and Internet evolutions of the 1980′s and 90′s. Even more interesting, people are now using mobile apps more than the “mobile Web” with users spending 94 minutes a day with their mobile apps versus 72 minutes on the Web. Unfortunately, the gap continues to widen each year.
Why is this? I thought browsing the mobile Web was cool?
Through much debate it has been determined the app world offers a better internet experience. According to Forrester Research CEO George Colony:
“The Web is not the internet; it’s just a software architecture we decided to put on the internet. Like its software predecessors, the Web will eventually be replaced and we think App Internet is the best direction for the next step. It’s faster, simpler and offers a better internet experience.”
Here’s a video of the entire talk and it’s worth a view.
Quite simply, the reasons for using a mobile device are fundamentally different than the reasons why we use a PC. When using a mobile device, consumers are action-oriented and aiming to complete quick tasks such as transactions, communications or searches for information rather than long form reading or document creating such as on a desktop.
Yet, the majority of sites found on the Web today are not optimized for mobile access so the general user experience is terrible. We have to pinch and zoom to read text and to find the appropriate link (which takes two hands by the way… try zooming in and out while carrying something in your other hand), some images don’t load well and sites can be too text heavy. And unfortunately, anyone with big thumbs end up hitting the wrong links and take three times longer to complete what should be a quick and easy task.
The majority of sites found on the Web today are not optimized for mobile access so the general user experience is terrible. We have to pinch and zoom to read text and to find the appropriate link, which takes two hands by the way… try zooming in and out while carrying something in your other hand.
This is annoying. It’s like the 8 yr old who will not stop shouting “Hey, that’s mine!” “Can I have that?” “She’s pulling my hair”. You just want them to stop and all you can think of at the time is “when will they grow up?”
The terrible mobile browsing experience is precisely why native apps are receiving more and more of our attention. Native apps are designed around and within the small screen, allowing the user a more pleasant experience. I am so not sure the massive growth of the app world is such a good thing and now is not the time to diverge into the native app vs mobile Web debate, but if the mobile Web is to mature there needs to be better standards that put mobile experiences in line with current use cases and patterns. Until then we are left to annoyance and the walled garden of the app world will continue to dominate.
The Mobile Web Is Intriguing
Yet, for all the annoyance there is an intriguing nature to the mobile Web. Strong glimmers of innovative new ideas involving shopping, creating, reading, searching, discovering, communicating, posting, transacting and many other activities are popping up right at our finger tips. It is truly an exciting time as many trends are converging to make 2012 the year the mobile Web finally turns the corner. Here’s just a few courtesy of Trendwatching.
One intriguing movement is instant visual information gratification, or bringing information about objects that consumers encounter in the real world through “point and know” actions from their mobile device. The race is on to add a (useful) real world element using textual and visual search, and by “real world” I mean the world of objects and people.
According to trendwatching.com:
“Created by Carnegie Mellon University, PittPatt is a facial recognition tool that enables users to find individuals from photographs or videos. The face detection software can locate human faces and match them up with photographs from Facebook and Google Images, identifying individuals in under 60 seconds.”
Another intriguing element of the mobile Web is the cashless society phenomenon. Sure, the cashless consumer concept has been around since the mid-2000′s and we’ve already seen some interesting virtual payment offerings, but nothing major has been driven through the mobile device. Trendwatching.com predicts:
“This year is going to be the year we see major players like Google, MasterCard and others actively roll out their cashless initiatives around the world. For consumers, the initial lure will be convenience, but eventually mobile payments will create an entirely new data-driven eco-system of rewards, purchase history, deals and so on.”
Expect to see a lot of innovation on the mobile payments and commerce space going forward.
Next page: Screens Are Taking Over Our World
As Australian Main Street Retail Figures Fall Online Stores Continue to Grow – San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
Jan 22nd
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As Australian Main Street Retail Figures Fall Online Stores Continue to Grow
San Francisco Chronicle (press release) Australian SEO Company Oracle Digital announces that savvy businesses are reaping the rewards in the online space. Australian SEO Company Oracle Digital are no strangers to the online world, and have now explained how savvy businesses have been … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
As Australian Main Street Retail Figures Fall Online Stores Continue to Grow – PR Web (press release)
Jan 22nd
 PR Web (press release) |
As Australian Main Street Retail Figures Fall Online Stores Continue to Grow
PR Web (press release) Australian SEO Company Oracle Digital announces that savvy businesses are reaping the rewards in the online space. Australian SEO Company Oracle Digital are no strangers to the online world, and have now explained how savvy businesses have been … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
How to Date Your SEO Partner – Buy a Bugle and Grow Bigger Ears!! – SubmitinME
Jan 12th
 SubmitinME |
How to Date Your SEO Partner – Buy a Bugle and Grow Bigger Ears!!
SubmitinME by Lazarus Hunt – Today 2 Views Hiring a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Social Media Promotion (SMP) agency is in a way like hiring a plumber though not always. While we make use of the sink taps and shower mixers on a daily basis, … Market Target, San Diego's #1 SEO Company Launches 24×7 Support Number 7 Quick Tips to Keep Your SEO On Track in 2012 SEO Imperial Beach: SEO Services in Imperial Beach from Head4 Marketing |
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New Year, New Website, New Opportunities: Grow your business with SearchCatalyst – MarketWatch (press release)
Jan 5th
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New Year, New Website, New Opportunities: Grow your business with SearchCatalyst
MarketWatch (press release) Small business owners might be interested in another prediction: search engine optimisation (SEO) is set to take the lead as 2012's top marketing strategy. SearchCatalyst, experts in small business SEO are an online marketing agency that specialise in … Make 2012 your year – grow your business with SearchCatalyst |
View full post on SEO – Google News
How to Use Virtual Assistants to Grow Your Business
Dec 7th
Time is a commodity that when spent, is gone forever. In today’s multi-task, multi-function smorgasbord, the flattening of the Internet has opened a window to savvy entrepreneurs looking to utilize and control the time they do have. We aren’t talking about magic, but a new breed of workers called virtual assistants.
These assistants take several forms: general assistants, Web developers, SEO specialists, content writers. What they have in common is that they are the specialized, contract workers in an online marketplace. They are the prospective job candidates you’ve yet to discover.
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As an example, consider serial entrepreneur Chris Ducker. He owns three companies: @Live2SellGroup, @VStaffFinder and @YourWebPA. He’s also a young father and husband. Just another expat living in the Philippines. Well, not exactly…
While Ducker admittedly doesn’t know how to code if his life depended on it, has poor spelling and grammar, and lacks the tech know-how to do it all himself, he’s able to acknowledge that and turn it into a positive, not a negative. The trick isn’t to do it all yourself, he says. The trick is to outsource the stuff you don’t know how to do, or just plain don’t have the time for.
From his home-base office in the Phillipines, Ducker employs virtual assistants to accomplish tasks that essentially slow his creative process as an entrepreneur.
“I now work no more than 7-8 hours a day, and my work-week no longer includes Friday,” he writes on his blog.
Adam Popescu is a Los Angeles based journalist with experience working in print, online and public radio journalism and a master’s from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He can be reached at adampopescu@gmail.com.
Ducker’s ebook and audio guide to virtual business: Saving the Day, the Virtual Way have quickly made him a respected voice in the online community. In November, on day one of Blog World LA, Ducker spoke about V.A.s in a 45-minute session, breaking down the nuts and bolts of using V.A.s to build, grow and monetize a blog. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know:
Ducker recommends business owners make a list of the things they hate to do. Then everything they can’t do. Then the things they should not be doing. That grocery list is the to-do-list for outsourcing. Now all you need is a virtual assistant to do it.
A typical “GM” assistant is used for online research, calendar management, audio/video uploading, transcription work, light social media management, and blog post drafting. The equivalent of a basic office assistant.
A Web developer handles WordPress installation, theme customization, light graphic design, site membership buildout, plug-in creation, and niche site creation. The tech stuff you can’t, and don’t want to do.
SEO specialists work on on-site operation, off-site optimization, link building, RSS feed set-up, social bookmarking, and link wheel creation.
Content writers specialize in keyword research, article content research, Internet link integration, article submissions, contenting spinning, and blogging.
“Do not outsource your content,” Ducker emphasized. Although he hires content writers to do a lot of the research on his posts, he never outsources the actual writing. His voice, and the voice of any brand, is hard to be duplicated by a virtual assistant (who can bring differing socio-cultural view to their writing that does not match the particular brand voice).
A lot of V.A.s are from Eastern Europe and South Asia. When it comes to payment, Ducker explains that off-shore V.A.s see themselves as employees. Domestic V.A.s don’t see themselves that way, he says. Instead, they view their role more as managerial or entrepreneurial rather than employee. Domestic workers often charge by the hour versus monthly for off-shore workers. Pay workers what they’re worth, Ducker advised. The wages earned from online roles for people in the developing world can make this work very lucrative for V.A.s, fiscally, as well as socially.
“Don’t micromanage them,” Ducker warns. To enhance productivity with his own workers, Ducker uses project management systems like Basecamp or Huddle to put everything together, cutting down on emails. To keep up to date with workers, he asks for V.A.’s to produce simple reports at the end of their work shifts, written in bullet points and highlighting what they’ve done (eliminating revolving tasks).
Training is key to success, he stressed. “If you assume the V.A. knows what you want without explaining…” he said at Blog World. “Bad.”
To cut down on confusion, Ducker instructs V.A.s on tasks using screencasts with audio and video, which he says V.A.s prefer to written directions. He also only delegates one project at a time, with a realistic completion timeline.
In no other era (tech notwithstanding) could Ducker be a blogger, podcaster, outsourcing expert, husband and dad. V.A.s allows business owners and entrepreneurs like him to focus on developing and creating the content they are known for. Not waste time dealing with unfamiliar process and the sometimes painstaking daily tasks required by a business. Think of it like buying from IKEA, setting up the table at home, versus ordering it from China pre-assembled. Yes, the end result, the table, is the same. But which path would you rather have taken?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
IDC’s Dan Vesset: Big Data Players to Grow in 2012, Disappear by 2015
Dec 6th
One of the most astoundingly sudden changes ever to happen in the software landscape in so short a period of time is the rise of “big data” and NoSQL, and the companies that manage it. What started out as a laboratory side-burner project at Yahoo just last year, is today a fully-funded company, with Hortonworks literally having managed to graft Hadoop onto a future Windows Server.
Breaking structured data out of its proprietary molds has enabled a completely new class of databases to lead the migration of enterprises to cloud storage platforms, leapfrogging from zero to hero. In the dust – it would seem – are companies like Oracle, SAP, and Sybase that suddenly find themselves playing catch-up. 2012 should be a superb growth year for Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR, and the many new companies and organizations riding the open source, big data growth wave. And they should enjoy the party while it lasts, says Dan Vesset, IDC’s program vice president for data warehousing and analytics, because history tells us such companies only grow so far.
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“We’re talking about tiny, tiny players with a few million dollars in professional services revenue,” Vesset tells RWW, “against multi-billion-dollar corporations. Any time that Oracle or IBM or SAP decide to get in, Hortonworks is just going to disappear. And I suspect Cloudera, MapR will [also] be acquired.”
Attrition! Attrition! (as sung by Zero Mostel)
Enjoy these brands while you can, the veteran IDC analyst believes, because before too long they’ll become rolled into the portfolios of major players. A decade ago, when Vesset was analyzing the then-emerging field of data warehouse appliances, “we had at least a dozen vendors come in within a very short time period, three years.” For example, does anybody remember DATAllegro, which blazed extraordinary new trails in data warehousing technology, to become acquired by Microsoft in July 2008? IBM acquired DataMirror; EMC acquired Greenplum; HP acquired Vertica. These were all data warehousing companies that were blazing trails just three years ago; already, they’re distant memories.
Vesset believes the big vendors will give Hortonworks and its brethren “leg room… for a few years.” They’ll rise up in the oven, and once they’re golden brown and baked just right, they’ll get consumed. “Maybe one of them will be able to get out organically and create a market,” he concedes, if it heeds the lessons of Red Hat and establishes a workable business model for itself around support and service.
And here’s where a new, big data company looking to survive rather than become acquired, might find an opportunity. Vesset cites a continuing demand for real-world tools to manage Hadoop-style data – tools that feel more like platforms than screwdrivers, and that don’t have names like Pig and Sqoop.
“Big vendors are not going to use open source technologies to put anything into production. It’s just not feasible for them,” he tells us. “They’re looking for support functions from companies like Hortonworks or Cloudera or EMC… additional automation software, additional tools and applications to help make Hadoop distributions more manageable by the average administrator or developer, so you don’t have to have high-end Java experts.”
Horton who?
The customer perception studies that Vesset reads tell him that a majority of information professionals today are unaware of Hortonworks’ existence. Some of his colleagues who attended the Hadoop World conference in New York last month reported the show was certainly newsworthy, although it was led by “a bunch of excited engineers looking around for a problem to solve.” For him, that’s the first sign of history repeating itself: When the data warehousing market took off 15 years ago, he relates, “there were a lot of failed projects because IT took the lead, built up very elegant, very sophisticated systems, and then wondered why nobody’s using them.”
The vendors Vesset believes will eventually acquire the big data organizations will be searching for methods of integrating Hadoop with their traditional data management technologies – methods that may not have been released yet by that time. Will we come to know what’s left of Hadoop using names like “Oracle Enterprise Application Cloud Adaptation Manager 2014?”
“I think within three or four years, more of the large vendors will be seeing real revenue opportunities in this market,” he responds. “So we will see more of the big vendors providing some type of solutions and services. Not to say within three or four years that all the startups will be gone; I think there will be a little bit of both.”
But hasn’t it always been the case that small startups apply themselves to narrow use cases and limited markets, becoming the king of their own respective hills, only to find themselves acquired by larger vendors that see the potential in leading those little fiefdoms… only to forget they exist within a few years, or sooner?
“In any given period of time, [there are] great opportunities for startups. Longer-term, things tend to aggregate. That’s not just IT; it’s the automotive industry, hotels, airlines. There are a few large vendors in control of most of the market, but there are always smaller vendors who are doing something interesting.”
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
LinkedIn Users Grow by 60%, Premium Subscriptions Double
Nov 3rd
Today LinkedIn shared its Q3 financials in its second-ever earnings statement as a public company. Its user base has increased by over 60% this year, and unique visitors grew substantially as well. Revenue has more than doubled. For the first time, hiring solutions comprised more than half of LinkedIn’s quarterly revenue. That became the company’s biggest source of revenue in Q1 2010.
LinkedIn appears to have found a unique position as a place for jobs and and employees to find each other and is clearly pushing to cement that role. It’s building new products, like Apply Through LinkedIn job applications, and recently launched Classmates, a new, data-driven tool targeted at students and recent graduates, which its biggest growing demographic.
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The earnings overview breaks down between premium subscriptions, marketing solutions and hiring solutions.
The number of members paying for premium subscriptions doubled in the last year, growing at a faster rate than other subscriptions. These accounted for 20% of revenue. Marketing solutions comprised 32% of revenue. Hiring solutions are now LinkedIn’s most profitable product, making 51% of the company’s revenue.
The company reports strong growth in the U.S. and internationally. It recently translated the site to Russian, Romanian and Turkish; it will be adding Japanese over the next few months.
This year LinkedIn also added more offerings for job recruiters with Talent Pipeline which helps centralize the way recruiters find, track and stay connected with potential hires and promotions.
The company bought real-time, search startup IndexTank and social contact management startup Connected.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO Services For Better Search Rank To Grow Your Website Traffic Faster – AddPR.com (press release)
Nov 2nd
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SEO Services For Better Search Rank To Grow Your Website Traffic Faster
AddPR.com (press release) Website promotion is easy by availing the quality SEO services of top notch SEO Companies in India. Yes, the country encompasses the best SEO companies which may offer you result oriented SEO services Website promotion is easy by availing the quality … SEOValley Offers Free SEO Audit Reports SEOValley is Offering Website Conversion Optimization Services |
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