So, you want to sell a car. Maybe you’ve got it listed on various classified websites, or maybe your a big car dealership CEO who just wants to shift more cars.
Now, you can use online video to sell your car.
Online video simply sells.
It sells better than pictures. Better than testimonials. And better than a list of features.
Video cuts through the hype and can lead to incredible sales.
So, is there anybody doing this right now?
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In October, e-consultancy released a free 11-page briefing based on E-consultancy 2007 round-table on Social Media, including topics as diverse as;
More information can be found on e-consultancy website;
Social media briefing October 2007 (e-consultancy) (The document is free to download, but registration is required)
That’s what Tom Foremski of SiliconValleyWatcher thinks in his article, Die! Press Release! Die!
Foremski states;
The press release is a statement announcing a product, service, office opening, financial results, partnership, customer win, and a hundred other types of commercial activities.
Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes. Often they will contain quotes from C-level executives praising their customer focus. They often contain praise from analysts, (who are almost always paid or have a customer relationship.) And so on…
Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense through Businesswire or PRnewswire to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists.
Essentially, Foremski says that lack humanity, doesn’t get to the truth of the story or is wrapped in so much spin that the story becomes a boring, pointless non-story, and spells out a plan on how to make the information in a press release useful.
Die! Press Release! Die! (original article by Tom Foremski).
A quick run-down of questions to ask about your current new media marketing strategy;
Purpose
What is the overall purpose and goal of the website? (ie: sell cars, sell products, get leads)?
Traffic
How much traffic is the site getting per month, and has this increased/decreased since last month?
Where is the site ranked on specific key phrases (ie: used cars)?
How popular is the website? How many members do you have?
How long do people stay on the site?
Promotion/Marketing/Advertising/PPC
What online/offline marketing, advertising or promotion is being done on the site?
How much is spent on PPC per month? How many leads does this generate?
Comparison between PPC and non-PPC marketing – how much traffic/leads are being generated? (IE: Is PPC working?)
What future promotion/marketing efforts are to be done?
Leads/Sales
How many leads are generated from the site?
How many of these leads are turned to sales?
Spam
How much spam does the site get, and what measures have been put in place to reduce this?
Accessibility/Usability
Is the website accessible? Does it conform to the latest DDA/Section 508 laws, if not – why not? How much will it cost to fix this? Is a complete site rewrite required?
Does the site have an accessibility statement?
Is the website usable, functional and easy-to-use, navigate and traverse?
It is reliable?
Is the site broken?
Are there any pages broken? (Check the error log)
Security
It the site secure?
Backups
How is the site currently backed up (if at all)?
If the site is indeed broken, inaccessible, or is unreliable, you might want to actively think about switching provider, or building your own internal web team to handle all things ‘web’ — especially if the problems are very large.
Ultimately, a website is a marketing tool that can be optimised by your internal team, your current supplier; or by switching provider (think about freelancers too!).
In Seth Godin’s book, “Small is the new big“, Godin details why he believes that personal relationships still matter, that a one-to-one relationship is worth more than a big name brand with countless awards, sales people or account managers.
“Small means that the founder is involved in a far greater percentage of customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them quickly.
Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change your business model when your competition changes theirs.
Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
Small means that you can answer e-mail from your customers.
Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others while you keep all the power because you invent something that’s remarkable and tell your story to people who want to hear it.A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart, small companies are happy to hire them.
A small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.”
This is a very quick jQuery example which shows a “Run” link, and when you click on the link a message should appear underneath it.
Put the following the your head part of your HTML document. (Note you may require to change the path of where you have installed jQuery.
And put this within your body of your page;
Congratulations! You just ran a snippet of jQuery code. Wasn't that easy?
Run
And that's it!
Using search engines as a way of promoting/marketing your website is often clouded in confusion, such as terms as “black hat”, “white hat”, etc.
If you’re just getting started with a business, it can be very confusing, frustrating and just plain annoying.
Fortuently I’ve found an excellent video discussion I found on found on Guruonline which introduces you to the basic topics of search engines and it cuts through the hype of what SEO is all about, and is an excellent resource for those who are just starting out, or have a small business and just want clear-cut answers.
Video: Search Engines – How to improve your rankings get to the top! (Guruonline.tv)
MODx has won the Most Promising Open Source Content Management System in Packt’s Open Source CMS Awards 2007, coming out on top ahead of TYPOlight and dotCMS, who came equal second.
Some of the awards were;
Most Promising Open Source Content Management System:
Best PHP Open Source Content Management System:
Best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System:
See the full list of winners on Packt’s website.
Facebook, Ning, Digg, Youtube, MySpace… these are all websites that you or your customers probably have used in the past, either to find old friends, to share ideas, or perhaps you’ve heard about how raving fans have promoted a product/brand for free in a spoof advert on Youtube?
So, you’re probably wondering what is social media/marketing/optimisation? Why bother? What does it all mean? And how can you/your business get involved?
There are probably more social networking sites out there then there are grains of sand on a beach. Of course I’m joking, but the idea that everyone is trying to get into the “social networking game” isn’t.
Social networking is big business.
Why?
Well the simple answer is: they make money.