By Lorelle, on August 26th, 2010,source http://woopra.com
Woopra is proud to be a Platinum Level Sponsor for OpenCamp in Dallas, August 27-29, 2010. We’re also uniquely involved in the event.
On Saturday, August 28, an expert panel of Woopra users will be sharing their insights into how they use Woopra’s real-time analytics and live chat features for their online business. Led by long-time Woopra fan and producer of the No Fact Zone, DB Ferguson, the panel will cover SEO, visitor tracking, customer service with the Woopra Live Chat Widget, trends, custom reports tracking, and more.
The CEO of Woopra and co-producer of OpenCamp, John Pozadzides, explained how OpenCamp is using Woopra’s features as part of the preparation, planning, and strategy of the event:
All of this year’s OpenCamp organizers are using Woopra’s shared access so we can see as visitors come and go in real time on the OpenCamp site, tracking the response to news, tweets, articles, ads, and really see where our visitors are coming from. We’ve been able to talk to website owners driving traffic to our site about becoming more actively involved in the event. Since their audience is interested and signing up for the event, shouldn’t they have a presence as well?
In addition, you may notice the little Woopra Chat Widget in the footer area of every page on the OpenCamp site. This is the Woopra Live Chat Widget which allows you to click-to-chat with any available member of the team. We’ve had volunteers staffing the chat for the past two months, answering questions and guiding people in the right direction. We’ve walked people through registration, talked to potential sponsors, and have been able to instantly expand relationships with those who need a little more help or information than what’s on the page. It’s been an incredible experience for all our volunteers to feel intimately involved in the event participants way before the event begins.
John added that some members have been fighting over the “good time slots” just so they can use the feature to interact with the most visitors during active times.
The whole Woopra team will be at OpenCamp all weekend and would love to answer your questions or help you learn more about how Woopra works, and what you would like to see improved in Woopra. Come on down and say hello!
By Lorelle, on July 29th, 2010,source http://woopra.com
John Pozadzides, CEO of Woopra, published “Analysis: What are the Web’s Top Sources of Referral Traffic?” on ReadWriteWeb showcasing how Woopra was used for recent research for RWW on the real impact of social media on your web traffic.
If there’s one thing we know about Web authors it’s that they are constantly seeking new sources of traffic for their content. It doesn’t matter if you’re a blogger, a marketing manager or a small business owner, there is simply no reason to invest time with content creation and Web design if no one is coming to read it. For this reason, it’s important to figure out where to actually invest time for the greatest ROI.
…the Woopra team provided me with the raw information that I used to create the charts below. This report is based on hundreds of millions of data points collected during the month of June 2010.
Virtually every category of Website is represented in the dataset – education, news, government, SMB, Fortune 500, blogs, adult – and while it clearly doesn’t reflect all of the sites on the Internet, my guess is that it is a statistically significant and representative sampling.
 The results analyze the top referrers of traffic, social network referrers, social bookmark referrers, search referrers, and media referrers with some very surprising results.
“I am constantly being asked by CEOs, VP’s of Marketing, Bloggers, and Social Media experts where they should focus their efforts for the greatest ROI. The problem is, no one can really give a definitive fact-based answer without having access to a very wide data set. And of course, virtually no one actually has access to a very wide data set!” explains John P.
“When I gave it some thought I figured that it was almost my obligation to compile the report since others weren’t able to, and the Woopra team was extremely happy to help the community by doing the work necessary to support the research.”
The Silent Social Media Success Story
All this research resulted in ReadWriteWeb’s article “StumbleUpon: The Silent Social Media Success Story” which uncovered the impact of StumbleUpon, a hot new driving force on the social media scene.
When you think of social media, two products immediately come to mind: Facebook and Twitter. If you’re in the technical world, you’d probably also mention Digg and Slashdot. A product that is rarely talked about among social media products, but has a surprisingly large footprint on the Web, is StumbleUpon. It now has 10.6 million users and regularly pushes big traffic to online publishers.
According to a new analysis by Web analytics company Woopra, StumbleUpon drives nearly twice as much traffic than Digg. StatCounter uncovered a similar trend recently, with StumbleUpon second only to Facebook among social media traffic drivers.
According to Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb, noted that according to Woopra “92% of search visitors originate from Google. This is much higher than Hitwise reports.”
By Charles McKeever, on July 7th, 2010,source http://opensourcemarketer.com
With all the available choices for publishing online these days, why would you every choose to have a self hosted website that you have to maintain on your own? As a business owner, this is one question you must answer correctly to ensure the long term health of your operations online.
A self hosted blog requires you to buy a domain name and have a paid hosting account. You have to install your blog, choose a template (a theme for WordPress), install some form of analytics, and then you can begin adding your content (images, text, videos, podcasts, etc.).
Why not just set up a free Tumblr blog, or WordPress.com blog? They offer easy publishing options and you can have a nice looking site set up in minutes, right?
Well, that’s true to some degree, but the real question is, are you running a business or strictly engaging in a hobby?
If you’re setting up site to support your hobby interests, then it doesn’t matter. If you’re setting up a business website then you’ll want to have every business advantage possible. You won’t want to be subject to restrictions that limit what you can do and what you can offer your customers.
As a publishing option each free services each have their own set of drawbacks, but the one common fault they all share is that you can’t download your files, burn your website to CD, and hand it to someone if they purchased your business.
This might not sound like a big deal at this point in your business, but think long term and consider this future business transaction from your potential buyers point of view.
Let’s say you’re looking to buy a website that’s well established and has good visitor traffic. You find two sites. Both are involved in the same industry and both have excellent traffic and have been around for the same amount of time. One site is self hosted and the other is hosted on a third party service. Both sites cost around $10,000. Which one would you rather buy, the one you could get your hands on, or the one that was hosted on someone else’s system?
Did your brain quiver for a second there?
If there is even a moment of friction in our hypothetical situation, then imagine what would happen in an actual situation where real money is on the line. You don’t want a potential buyer to walk away because of a sense of uncertainty of what they are getting for their money. If you can’t guarantee they’ll own it, then you’re less likely to be able to sell it.
Does that mean all free publishing services should be off your radar? Of course not. These resources should be viewed as a way to establish promotional channels that extends the reach of your brand and help increase the value of your actual website where you do business.
A good example of this can be seen by looking at what Gary Vaynerchuk is doing with his personal brand. He has several popular sites that he uses to distribute his message and build his personal brand, but when it comes down to doing business, his sites are on paid hosting sites. He leverages the free publishing sites as marketing tools, but long term his money is invested in business sites that he owns and could sell to someone as a tangible asset.
So yes, leverage free, but own your business.
How are you using free to build your business?
Share your thoughts below and let us know what you think.
Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com
Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.
By Cammie Swegman, on July 5th, 2010,source http://ipresort.com
On August 27, 2010, we are attending an historic event in Addison, TX. It’s called OpenCamp, and if you are a webmaster, web developer, blogger, podcaster, social media enthusiast or someone who is interested in web content creation you should be there too.
OpenCamp is the first multi-platform web conference to be held in the Southwest, and some of the most notable people on the web are speaking there.
Just a few on the list:
- Brian Clark of CopyBlogger fame
- Doug Vann who travels all over sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm for Drupal
- Chris Pirillo founder of the blogging platform Lockergnome, is a Tech Expert on CNN, and is on the Board of Directors for UstreamTV
- Trey Ratcliff whose travel photography blog “stuckincustoms.com” is the #1 blog of it’s kind on the net, getting approximately 350,000 visits per month
Unlike other conferences that focus on only one platform, there will be sessions on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Blogger and many other tools for web development. In addition to the various content platform sessions there will be general sessions regarding best web practices. There will also be parties, networking, information sharing and the opportunity to make lots of new friends who share your passion for the endless possibilities provided by the Internet.
If you are not familiar with Addison, TX, you should know that it is a beautiful suburb of Dallas and attendees of OpenCamp are encouraged to book a room at the newly renovated Crowne Plaza Hotel in Addison, where there will be parties as well as the learning sessions. Rooms are very affordable if you book while the OpenCamp block is still available. They are also quite nice. You can take a video tour of the hotel here (scroll about halfway down the page): http://openca.mp/blog/get-a-tour-inside-the-opencamp-venue-video/
If you’ve been reading our blog posts, you know that last year we attended WordCamp Dallas, which was truly an impressive event. But this year’s OpenCamp promises to be even better and we can’t wait!
No related posts.
By Shaun Swegman Jr., on August 20th, 2009,source http://ipresort.com
Highlights
- Tool for branding
- Capability for customization
- The key is integration
Marketers are always looking for the next new thing when it comes to finding ways of getting their message out. And for good reason. After all, the field was transformed throughout the 20th century by technological innovations in media, from radio to the Internet. These days, the latest thing is social media marketing, and marketers are still working out how to best use it to their advantage.
Social media marketing is an excellent tool for branding in the business-to-consumer market. It is an effective way to maintain a connection between a company and its customers. However, like all marketing tools, SMM works better for reaching some goals than others, and works best as a part of a larger marketing campaign. One of the more prominent forms of branding today is getting your customer base to personally identify themselves with your product or service. For example, every time you see a car with one of those Apple stickers on it, you’re seeing branding at work. That person is saying, “not only do I love my Mac, I consider it a part of my own Continue reading Direct Mail Compliments Social Media Marketing
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