Branding Rant

Thanks to WhyDoWork.com, I came across a study by Comscore which has found that most click-throughs come from heavy clickers, representing just six percent of the online population.

I’ve always been skeptical of the types of users more likely to click on ads but this is just amazing. Read this:

…heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

Isn’t that something? Should we follow CPM or CPA for buying into ads instead of CPC?

I think if you’re going to be running display ads in auctions, gambling sites and career services sites, you might want to be weary about going by CPC instead.

Somehow I can imagine those game-like ads on MySpace would get a lot of click-throughs from this audience, too.

Check out the full ComScore report about heavy clickers here.

(Image Credit)

I just received an email about a new development coming to MyBlogLog. This is also in line with a project that I’m working on at the moment - my mouth is sealed on that one though.

Basically, MyBlogLog is looking to combine all the personal data from your social networking profiles into one easily accessible site. No longer will you have to remember 20 different sites to login to, to check.

That’s the big problem with these social networks these days, there are so many of them, it’s hard to keep up. It seems like converging these networks and making use of RSS, XML and other data formats is really going to be the future of the web.

As for this small project I’m working on which is along similar lines as this, you can expect to see it within the next week or two.

Since Web 2.0 has gained massive momentum, it was only a matter of time that the American Marketing Association adopted a new definition for marketing. See what you think of the new definition:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Here is the old 2004 definition by comparison:

Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

I won’t rehash about what I wrote about the new definition on Small Business Branding, but I will say that the major focus of this definition over the old one is that it’s intention was to broaden the scope of marketing to more groups. This telegraphs the opportunities currently available to marketers and for that reason, I think it’s important to understand the new definition. Despite being a bit late, I think it’s worth mentioning that one of the major themes for this definition was highlighted all the way back at Mplanet 2006, when this was cutting edge.

According to another article their last definition didn’t really catch on, but here’s to hoping this version will.

For more information on the new definition as well as others which pop up, visit the Marketing Power blog here.

Last night was the first Qld Internet Professionals Meeting and it turned out to be great.

Around about seven people rocked up at the Brewhouse and chatted about how they made their living online. We have a relatively diverse range of skills in the group, ranging from coders, designers, internet marketers, salesmen and business owners and we all got along swimmingly. Topics of the night included SEO, domaining, torrents and outsourcing. Here are the guys that made it last night:

• Stuart Hilditch
• Peter Laurent
• Ben Wilks
• Mike McMahon
• Angus Scown
• Rob (didn’t catch your last name)

I managed to take a few photos from the night, but my camera was very dodgy and I had to photoshop them to make them legible. You should get the picture though.

Right-Left: Mike McMahon and Stuart Hilditch chatted about coding, making money and internet business.

Right-Left: Rob and Angus Scown had a good long chat about developing sites.

Right-Left: Peter Laurent and Ben Wilks talked on domaining, SEO and all the degrees that they should have done 10 years ago.

I think for the next meetup we’ll do something a little more structured and at a place where the younger crowd can meetup, as well (Draicone). I have a few ideas up my sleeves… Also, what are you thoughts on eventually doing workshops?

I hope everyone enjoyed the night as I did. I look forward to attending the next meet up - perhaps in a month’s time.

I made an interesting discovery today. Due to the way I have my permalinks setup, I have the same page listed twice in Google - resulting in duplicate content. Take a look at this:

As you would know from reading a previous article of mine on duplicate content, this is BAD. Fortunately, I know exactly how this occurred and how to solve this problem.

Don’t Change Categories Once Your Article is Posted

OK, this only applies if you have Categories as part of your permalink structure. As a general rule of thumb, once you have posted your article, do not make any changes to the variables in your permalink structure. For example here is my permalink structure:

/%post_id%/%category%/%postname%.html

Given this, I cannot risk changing the category of my post or the post slug of the post. Doing so may end up in sending Google to a 404 page or a page with duplicate content. You might also like to know that there are many more tags available:

• %postname% - Avoid changing the name of the post or the post slug, if you’re using one
• %post_id% - Don’t worry about this
• %category% - Avoid switching Categories or renaming Categories
• %author% - Don’t change the author of the post or their name

For the following permalink tags, I believe you just need to not change the date of posting:

• %year%
• %monthnum%
• %day%
• %hour%
• %minute%
• %second%

Of course, these should only apply if you have these tags in your permalink structure. For more info about permalink tags, visit the WordPress codex on using permalinks.

What if I need to Change My Permalinks?

Simple. Install a copy of the Permalink Redirect plugin as I discussed in my article about SEO plugins for WordPress. After noticing how much changing permalinks affects your ranking, I’m not going to change my permalink structure at the flick of a wrist. I’ll wait until I need to change a large number of posts.

When you do change it, I’d recommend minimising the number of tags you use in your permalink structure. That way it makes your pages appear more important to Google and you don’t have to worry about the small changes you make to your articles in the future.

Happy Blogging!

This Tuesday (Jan 29, 08) will see the first ever meetup for the Brisbane Internet Professionals meetup group.

Stuart Hilditch is the event organizer and he created the group some time ago. It’s a group which aims to bring together people in Brisbane who earn an income from their work on the internet. So far, there are 29 group members registered. Like the Brisbane Bloggers group, I expect this number to grow steadily.

Since this is the first group meetup, it’ll be a good old casual chat to get to know the people in the group. If you’re a Brisbanite and you’re looking to get yourself established in the industry, it’s well worth attending. You’ll get a lot of value out of meeting people and the sharing opportunities.

Go ahead and sign up over at the Queensland Internet Professionals Meetup Group here, to be a part of the event.

I’ve got a special guest here today. Introducing Peter Laurent - a 21 year old business owner who has written a book, coached people and orchestrated a product launch online. All of this and he has a particularly interesting focus on using social networking sites to connect with people in new and exciting ways.

Without further ado, here is the interview I did with Peter.