Hello again IT and technology friends!

Keeping the tradition of the past 3 years, we are once again putting together our ever popular EGOMEDIA holiday contest!

Following the success of last year’s iPad giveaway, it’s time to give away the iPad2 to one lucky winner at the end of December!

If you want to be this year’s lucky contest winner…we couldn’t have made it any easier: Answer the skill testing question, fill in the online contact form…and you’re in to win!

Want to increase your chances of winning the iPad2?  Here’s how…“Like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Google+ or you can always invite your friends to participate…the more the merrier!

Last year was a record year for our contest…over 80 000 entries! WOW!  This year, if we beat that and reach our new goal of 100 000 entries, there will be more prizes to give away!! We’re feeling generous! Also new this year; our early subscribers will be rewarded for their support.

Don’t delay! Consult our website regularly to be among the first winners!

Once again, EGOMEDIA is celebrating x-mas early this year with iPad2…all this to say « thank you »!

If you have any questions regarding contest rules and regulations or if you want to make any suggestions, please feel free to contact us on the next page.

Have a great week everyone!

Welcome Web Friends!

I have said it many times over the years, the 2.0 version of the web is only an intangible concept where non viable business models and hazardous investments of all kinds multiply.

Would’t you know it, recently, Le Journal du Net has listed the principal flops of the infamous web 2.0.

In the past few years, over a hundred million dollars, possibly a few billion were squandered.  Let’s review the most memorable failures;

• Bebo: Purchased for 850 million $ by AOL in 2008.  Sold two years later for only…10 million! That’s an 840 million $ loss for AOL.  That’s painful, very painful…
• Digg: After raising a few million dollars, the founders of Digg seemed to be getting a little greedy (150 million claimed) and failed to sell at the right moment.  Today, they are on the verge of bankruptcy.
• Delicious: Purchased for nearly 30 million $ by Yahoo at the end of 2005, the portal has officially been put on the market a few months ago…it was never even profitable!
• Second Life: If the study conducted by Le Journal du Net doesn’t give us a clear picture of the colossal losses brought on by Second Life, no one will doubt that they are indeed substantial in 2008, everyone was buzzing about Linden Labs’ virtual world.  Today, we barely remember it ever existed.
• MySpace: In spite of its 122 million users, MySpace was never able to compete with the success of Facebook. It’s slowly heading for the 2.0 graveyard…Valued at 5 billion $ in 2007, today, the company is worth less than one billion. That’s one sacred loss for the investors.

Now you understand, everything is not rosy in the world of 2.0…and just think, there is talk of a 3.0 version of the web!  Take out your calculators and place your bets!  Who will be the biggest loser??

Have a great week everyone!

Social media are an integral part of the Internet. It is commonly known that every company should be present on social media platforms.

To begin, here are a few figures…

A study carried out by Burson-Marsteller on the 100 biggest companies ranked in the Fortune Global 500 reveals that 65% of them have one or several profiles on Twitter, making of it the most popular social media. The study indicates that these companies use social media not only to spread information but also to participate in discussions by posting messages or comments.

Being on social media is a way of managing efficiently its customer relationship and offering high-quality after-sales service. A blog or a profile on Twitter, Facebook or any other social website is a showcase for a company. It represents an additional sales channel to your website or your store. Still not convinced? Here is a figure that might make you change your mind. Thanks to its Twitter account, Dell’s sales for 2009 amounted to 6.5 million dollars. So, what do you think of that?

Social media have another important advantage. It reinforces closeness and interactivity between the company and its customers. The cascade-system for finding friends enables you to increase brand awareness, convey a modern image of the company and be one length ahead of your competitors. These websites are essential when it comes to competition watch. On the other hand, according to Dix-Katre blog, 90% of Internet users trust friends’ recommendations, 70% trust unknown Internet users and 42% of respondents rely upon advertising. In other words, these stats show how important it is to be on social media.

You have understood that there are plenty of advantages to be on social media. They bring traffic to your website, they convey a young and modern image of your company and they let you know more about your clients’ opinions.

So, which social media do you have to be on? Of course, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube cannot be ignored. But others websites such as Digg, Reddit, LinkedIn and Delicious are worth considering.

I hope you have remembered from this article that it is vital for a company to be present on social media platforms.

See you soon!

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Hello everybody,

The title of this article says a lot on what I think, especially after reading the figures hereunder compiled by Efficient Frontier and Marketing Sherpa.

However, I want to remind you that paid positioning (SEM) is essential when it comes to tackle the event field, the launch of a new product or service, or even a seasonal activity.

So, what does this survey say? Firstly, investments in SEM have risen by 21% in the United Kingdom over the first quarter of 2010.

Secondly, more than 30% of American companies using paid positioning resort to tools to copy keywords used by their competitors. It is really stupid, especially when you learn that these figures were obtained from $25 000 campaigns or more!!!

Inherently, SEO is made to distance oneself from others… benchmarking doesn’t have its place here!

The study is even more worrying when we learn that paid positioning (SEM) represents more than 80% in “Search” (SEM + SEO) investment in 2010.

Where are we going? Why do companies persist in spending huge amounts of money while a good SEO and SEM job would allow them to generate more considerable earnings without much investment?

To sum up, we can say that search engines are those making profit of the situation… In 2009, in the United States, search engines generated more than $65 per Internet user (it is 4 times superior to the international average)… Just think of it!

Have a good week!

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Dear web investors,

As we have already said on this blog, you won’t see any promising results if the traffic on your website is low or inexistent.

Recently, the Electronic Business Group has released the “Internet Marketing 2010” book from the e-marketing red books series.

Of course it won’t be as good as the work SEO, SEM and SMO experts can do, but this book might increase your web marketing knowledge. Here is one of the few tips given in the book:

Create a successful SMO campaign in 12 steps:

1. Get down your pedestal.
2. Concentrate on needs to satisfy, influences, sites on which traffic is important, competitors’ positioning…
3. Imagine a service answering an identified but unfulfilled need.
4. Make sure the Internet user can take part in the construction of your project.
5. Spread information again and again on most suitable social media websites.
6. Adapt your communication to your public: you don’t write the same way on a blog or on Facebook for example.
7. Use well-adapted and long-lasting avatars on social media websites.
8. Leave easy ways of spreading communication to your Internet users.
9. Follow-up regularly with your community by nominating a “community manager”.
10. You can’t control everything. Just admit it!
11. Make sure you have enough energy to implement your project.
12. Build a long-lasting relationship. We know that the ROI in SMO is proportional to the length of the operation. Think of a long-term action and optimize it!

Have a nice week!! Don’t hesitate to leave your comments or suggestions. It will be a pleasure to answer them.

See you next week!

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