The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Daily Deals will Die by 2016, says Forrester’s report November 21, 2011 – 7:47 pm				Damjan Arsovski

By 2016, advertisers will be spending $77 billion on interactive marketing, as much as they do on TV nowadays, the interactive marketing components (SEM, display ads, mobile, e-mail marketing and social media) will grow to 35% of all advertising spend as they get highly involved in the marketing mix, and the daily deals will switch from winners to losers… these are some of the interesting predictions in the latest US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016 published by the Forrester Research Group.

The forecast, free to download, explains that in the upcoming years, advertisers will spend more money on interactive marketing because of the excitement about emerging media, the effectiveness of the interactive marketing and the overall customer obsession with online media and mobile devices.

The report contains many interesting predictions, some of them a bit controversial and very doubtful, but still worth taking them in consideration when working on your next strategies and business spending.

Beside concentrating on the mobile and social media expansions, one part of the report that I really was surprised to see was the prediction that the daily deals would die.

The reason for this statement, Forrester is putting in these words:

“Standing out above the clutter becomes harder for marketers as ad exposures grow. So some marketers unable to differentiate will rely on spontaneous coupons through more and more urgent Groupon-like “daily deals” as one way to drive notice. Consumers will grow so conditioned to micro-impulse offers that they’ll lose practice at considered decisions — in all walks of life, not just when buying spa treatments. Facing a cultural descent into maladroit judgment, employers (and spouses) will blacklist impulse deals to keep people intentional.”

Controversal, but yet very interesting forecast. What do you think?

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Business News, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, web 2.0 | 2 Comments »
Tags: daily deals, forrester, forrester research, Interactive Marketing, marketers, marketing agency, marketing company, moble marketing

Welcome back Delicious! September 27, 2011 – 4:53 pm				Damjan Arsovski

The two YouTube co-founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen through their mutual company Avos, are now restarting the famous Delicious, web service for bookmarking and sharing that they recently bought from Yahoo.

The refreshed version of this service keeps a lot of the same characteristics that in the past attracted millions of users, but it also features a lot of new additional settings and options, making this good-old website even more attractive to active web users.

The YouTube co-founders consider this website a new one, completely redesigned with new homepage and interface. They add that the idea behind Delicious is to keep it’s original purpose, but they seriously plan to fix the way users find out new links and web destinations.

Through settings and features such as “Stack”, users will be able to group their favorite links, which later they can share with other friends and Delicious users. The collection can be public and other users can subscribe to it and get notifications every time new website is added to the stack. Each of the stacks can feature their own profile images and description.

The new Delicious also introduced improved tags and keeps all the past API calls the same.

As an active Delicious user, I’m very happy to see this refreshed version and even happier to know that this website is no longer in the hands of Yahoo, which is really surviving some tough times… but that’s really a discussion for some other times.

Check out this video with on the new Delicious.com:

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Business News, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0, Website Design | No Comments »
Tags: avos, bookmarking, chad hurley, delicious, delicious welcome back, delicious.com, new design, web, web 2.0, web designw, web service, YouTube, youtube co-founders, youtube cofounders

Facebook continues to copy Twitter with “Subscribe” September 15, 2011 – 3:11 pm				Damjan Arsovski

Facebook introduced a new feature that will enable users to follow public content from other profiles, even if they are not friends with them. The new service is called “Subscribe”, and is almost an exact replica of Twitter’s “Follow” function.

You will be able to find the “Subscribe” button right on user’s profiles, on the right side next to the profile name.

When you press the button Subscribe, you can choose which updates you want to receive, and Facebook gives you 1) All Updates, 2) Most Updates, 3) Only Important as main options, with filters available per update category (life events, status updates, photos, videos, games…).

And of course the subscription option doesn’t work for every status update you publish, but only for the updates that you make public.

To active this new feature, head out here.

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: facebook, facebook profile, facebook users, follow, Interactive Marketing, new features, smm, social media, Social Media Marketing, subscribe, twitter, twitter users

Websites Made of Pure Chocolate September 7, 2011 – 2:13 pm				Damjan Arsovski

If you were told that in order to promote your product better you should make a website made only of real images of your products, you might throw out that idea as insane… but shortly after we show you these two awesome case studies, I’m sure you will reconsider your initial decision and will be more open to such creative suggestions.

Whittaker’s Chocolate, a New Zealand chocolatier and the Portuguese Sagres Preta, maker of chocolate stout beer, bravely decided to create their website only using chocolate, their main ingredient.

Everything from the interface design to the navigation and the social icons on their website is made of chocolate!

The idea is brilliant, and with this approach these two companies are showing that advertising should be fun and honest, not boring, false or evil.

To better promote this initiative, the companies also accompanied the campaign with videos of how the websites were done – from idea to execution. Check out one of the videos that went viral on the web:

Delicious, isn’t it!?
If you would like to reinvent your own website and find a creative way to promote your products like these two brave companies, feel free to get in touch with us.

As a final thought, I’ll just share this excellent quote from the great Jerry Della Femina, who said:

“I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Digital Media, Graphic Design, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Online PR, Photography, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, web 2.0, web development, Website Design | 1 Comment »
Tags: choco, chocolate, chocolates, creative ideas, creative web design, Interactive Marketing, sagres preta, social media, video, video production, Website Design, whittaker

LinkedIn Stats & Demographics, July 2011 August 8, 2011 – 9:57 am				Damjan Arsovski

After the recent IPO, LinkedIn decided to post their financial results and stats for the second quarter of 2011. During Q2, LinkedIn managed to get record amount of users, unique visits and pageviews.

With more than 115,8 million users and counting, about 61% increase compared to same period last year, and revenue of $121 million in Q2/11, compared to $54,9 million in 2010,  this professional social network is really onto something….

Check out the following First Earnings Announcement PPT by Jeff Weiner and Steve Sordello for more details on how this social network is becoming a key player in the online business world:

Furthermore, take a look at the following PPT by Amodiovalerio Verde, in which he outlines some very interesting stats about LinkedIn, such as:

• 58,5% of the 116 million users are male
• The users from the following 10 countries represent 80% of all LinkedIn members: US, India, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, France, Australia, Italy and Spain
• About 68% of users come from Europe and North America
• Almost 50% of the users have titles such as managers, principals, owners, CEOs or vice presidents
• About 40% of the users work in companies with more than 10,000 employees

For more LinkedIn facts, check out:

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in blog, Business News, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: LinkedIn, linkedin business network, linkedin demographics, linkedin first earnings, linkedin ipo, linkedin marketing, linkedin statistics, linkedin stats, linkedin users, linkedin.com, social networks, statistics

Google & Local Marketing August 3, 2011 – 11:41 am				Aurélien Uster

Local marketing is most often the life-line of many businesses, and the concept for many business owners exists whether or not they are aware of or acknowledge local marketing in its professional concept. For instance in a village or neighborhood, businesses promote themselves by taping posters to telephone poles, on their windows, or just by chatting with the locals. Millions of small businesses still operate in this fashion, and produce results that carry their businesses throughout the year.

However, technology evolves (especially in the Internet field) and we can easily see that more and more customers are looking for information on the web, even when pertaining to interactions with local businesses. “Where is the nearest hardware store?” “Where can I find someone that will fix my bike?” are questions that you may ask yourself sometimes. Is your first reflex to check the internet? The change in reactionary behavior is an interesting development in the past 20 years and one of the main reasons one must reconsider the manner in which their marketing efforts are directed. Many don’t have enough capital to launch huge marketing campaigns, so how should they begin to approach local marketing?

Google can play a huge role with just 2 of their many tools: Google Adwords and Google Places. Adwords allows businesses to create a PPC (Pay per Click) advertising campaigns. These ads can be found almost anywhere on the web, more than just on Google searches. Depending on your communication needs, you can launch a campaign that would target only the people you want to visit your business, and convert the visit for profit. This works very well when for local campaigns, as you will appear only on the results pages and on websites in your area. Obviously, it makes no sense to display an ad for a hardware store in San Francisco on a New Yorker’s screen, unless the business is virtual.

Less popular but effective is Google Places, a great tool that allows you to add your business address on Google/Google Maps so that you can share your information more easily – location, hours of operation, pictures of your store and deals or discounts you may be offering to entice customers. When someone does a local search, Google provides the information you’ve submitted to let users to find the business most able to suit their needs.

Now with these two tools, let’s imagine a combination of them to create a super efficient PPC campaign. You would be able to appear in the results pages thanks to the Google Adwords campaign, but also in Google Maps when someone is looking for “places near them”. As a result, you gain a better visual impact on Google as the user can see your business twice, and is given relevant information pertaining to their search. You can obtain greater efficiency in your marketing campaign without having to spend a lot of money.

Posted by Aurélien Uster
Posted in blog, Interactive Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Small Business, web 2.0 | No Comments »

Twitter is planning branded profiles similar to Facebook pages April 6, 2011 – 12:16 pm				Damjan Arsovski

Marketing Magazine has reported that the micro-blogging service is (finally!) working on branded pages through which marketing agencies and companies can share content and connect better to their users.

The new branded pages will probably look a lot like the Facebook fan pages and will offer some extra services like analytics (currently available only  for few selected profiles) and improved privacy rules. At this moment, companies are usually using #hashtags, promoted accounts and tweets to connect to their audiences but this hasn’t worked very well in practice.

There aren’t a lot of details about how these brand pages will function and look like, but it is confirmed from Twitter that the brands want, and need, this kind of tools from the social network so that they can better manage their online presence and campaigns.

I have always wondered why Facebook, and soon Twitter, both looking for fresh revenue streams, are not considering adding few extra options to the branded profiles that will be available to companies as paid features. Using this kind of a freemium model strategy, they might even make some good $$…. Wouldn’t you be willing to pay few bucks if you could add some cool feature to your Twitter company page that gives you better interaction with your followers or have a built-in scheduled status updates in Facebook?

Btw, on a related topic: in an effort to attract more users to join the global 140 character conversation, Twitter will be changing the look of their homepage. They actually “copy-pasted” the Facebook homepage, probably thinking that new visitors would be more willing to sign up if the page reminds them of the platform on which they spend most of their online time.

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in blog, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 | 1 Comment »
Tags: branded profiles, facebook, facebook fan pages, Facebook marketing, Social Media Marketing, twitter, twitter analytics, twitter company profiles, twitter for business, twitter marketing, twitter vs facebook

A Social Media Infographic: From Your Friendster To Your Followers March 17, 2011 – 3:45 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Edelman Digital Presents Social Media Milestones

While I was away from the typewriter, Edelman Digital created a visual timeline of social media‘s growth this past decade. I remember first hearing about Friendster in the Village Voice. It was mainly described as an online community for getting women without the fees and gimmicks of dating websites. Nowadays, if you don’t use Tumblr, you are suspect to some folks.

The model has taken off, to put it nicely. Nowadays, celebrities can build or destroy their images through the digital landscape. Some of these statistics are quite jarring. Do you remember your first encounter with social media? Leave thoughts below.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, green marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, web 2.0, web development | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, internet marketing ny, ragan pr daily, social media, Social Media Marketing, social media marketing agency

Chew on Mint.com’s Fresh Data October 28, 2010 – 1:47 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

A couple of years ago, Blueliner CEO Arman Rousta discussed the sleek minimalism of Mint.com as a website. It has improved my money management on simple levels due to its clear interface.  The website design has been lauded by experts, and Mint has engineered a new level of online money management in an age where thrift is king.  You can manage all of your accounts online whether they are property, savings, or loan accounts.  They also offer a smorgasboard of services that could save you fees in the future.  As a synergic triumph of e-commerce and financial management, Mint is highly recommended. Currently, Mint is not charging for its services, but that could change as it popularity grows.

The web designers at Mint are back with a fresh vein on the leaf.  MintData aggregates the budgetary habits of their anonymous members nationwide, tracking trade at businesses while analyzing the trends.  The new website gives the member a keen understanding of our consumer habits along with an opportunity to see the straw that stirs our economy.  In short, it uses a similar algorithm that is applied on the individual and branches it out for the Mint community at-large.  With only 4 million users, Mintdata is a sample size of working professionals that have consistent access to cyberspace. They are a factor in our demographic, and have the ability to push the marketplace.  If interested in analyzing commercial business data, or just want to observe purchasing trends at your local Brother Jimmy’s BBQ, crunch some leaves here.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in blog, Business News, Flash, web 2.0, web development, Website Design | No Comments »
Tags: arman rousta, Blueliner Marketing, brother jimmy's bbq, mint.com, mintdata.com, new york e-commerce agency, new york website design agency, online financial management, web 2.0, web 2.0 design, Website Design

What Game Do You Play On Facebook? September 30, 2010 – 10:10 am				admin

There is no doubt, on reading the latest news in Telegraph UK, that more than 200 million users are playing social games on Facebook each month. The so called social games on Facebook are on the rise these days as Facebook is the most popular social networking site at present. Zuckerberg said at Facebook’s gaming event that“despite being in the top five that people like, social games are also in the top five things people hate”. Read the full news here.

Here is a list of social games on Facebook that I picked up based on reviews and voting from friends and others.

o    Farmville
A virtual world game developed by Zynga is the top social media game available on the Internet right now. With a small piece of land and money, users can start playing this game. 11 million active daily users reported.

o    Mafia wars
Be your own Mafia boss, do jobs, earn money and buy weapons. This is idea behind this game. Developed by Zynga and with about 4 million active users daily, this is the second on list of popular games on Facebook.

o    Zynga Poker
This is another social game from Zynga, where you can play poker with your friends and win daily bonus. This game has attracted players from more countries with about 30 million active monthly users.

o    Yoville
Just like the ones above, Yoville from Zynga is another virtual world game that allows users to create personal avatars, Yovillians who can play games, chat, attend events and interact with friends.

o    Pet Society
This free game from Playfish allows the users to create their own pets, involving in activities and earning coins to buy cool stuff. Pet society has about 13 million active monthly users.

o    Word Challenge
Another social game from Playfish is Word Challenge, where you are asked to create 3-6 letter words from the given 6 letters. Players are awarded a ranking based on the results for a comparison with their friends.

o    KickMania
The animated Kick Ass game on Facebook where every kick is unique and fun filled. A lot of people are playing this game developed by The Broth.

o    Happy Aquarium
This is a cool social game on Facebook with 12 million active users who can adopt a cute baby fish, watch them grow and build a happy aquarium.

The above list is a small one and soon this may increase in numbers. Now, go ahead and add the one you are really addicted to play and do it again.

Posted by admin
Posted in blog, Content Marketing, Flash, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: Content Marketing, facebook, Farmville, Mohamed Mohideen, Playfish, Social Games, Social Media Marketing, The Broth, Zynga