Here is a great (but long, 30 minutes) video from TED Ideas worth spreading with Barry Schwartz discussing his book, The Paradox of Choice. Funny and entertaining, Barry talks about how providing consumers with too much  choice can affect your business.  Watch the video and think in terms of website design.  You’ll be simplyfying your own website in no time.

Google has made a few changes to their Quality Score rating in Adwords over the past few weeks and Inside Adwords now provides 2 new videos on Ads Quality Basics and the new upgrades.

The first video, Ads Quality Basics, provides a general introduction to Ads Quality, including an overview of Quality Score and answers to some common questions about Ads Quality.

The second video, Ads Quality Updates, goes beyond the basics and gives more detail on the recent changes made to Ads Quality.

Check out the Inside Adwords blog once a week for updates that will influence for Adwords campaign.

When I think “viral marketing”, one of the first campaigns that come to mind is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty I am sure that I am not the only one!

There have been several elements to the Dove Campaigns, pretty much all of interactive and successful. Click on the link below to see just one Dove promotion, a YouTube video that was posted in 2006. Since that time, this video has been viewed 8,056,122 times, commented on 3,262 times, and been rated 7469 times. Talk about consumer interaction!

Dove Evolution

Another viral element is their pay beauty forward campaign, which invites their website viewers to send a flower with a message (the sender picks both the colour of the flower and the message from a drop down menu). So far over 10,000 flowers have been sent. There was also the Dove Sleepover for Self Esteem, a great concept inviting women and children to host a sleepover that includes much discussion about self esteem and “real beauty”.

Now I happen to live in downtown Toronto and I doubt that I will ever forget the “Fat vs. Fab” billboard over the DVP that featured a woman in her undies. People were invited to text in their votes on whether they thought she was “Fat” or “Fab”. They rant the same ad in UK with the options being “Overweight” or “Outrageous” and I think it was “Fat” or “Fit” in the US. I remember being slightly uncomfortable with this one and very disappointed when the results came in with 51% of them voting “fat”. Still, that was one of the first campaigns that I had seen successfully incorporate texting

So after mentioning all of these well thought out interactive campaigns, what will Dove come up with next? Something that focuses on how well Dove products work, perhaps? With the exception of maybe a couple of television commercials, Dove has so far skipped the whole “believe in our product” sort of advertising and jumped straight into the “believe in yourself” messaging, weaving their products with the warm happy feelings that one feels when she is confident and beautiful.

Love or hate the Dove approach, this whole concept of creating a movement that is bigger than your product is a perfectly suited for viral marketing and the rest of the online world. We have seen other successful examples of this and, as more companies catch on to the implications and potential of online marketing, I am sure we will see many more successful viral campaigns spread throughout the web like a wildfire.

Aaron Wall illustrates one of the main issues with SEO today. By now, everyone has heard of SEO but how many businesses are really doing it? How many people put in a half hearted effort before calling it a day?  Of course, that is the easy thing to do isn’t it. Throw in the towel and claim that SEO doesn’t work because someone doesn’t have the courage to see it through.

Still, there are those clients/entrepreneurs that have the conviction to make a commitment to SEO and see it through. For smaller sites, it may take a while to see the results but for larger sites, benefits can be startling.

In November, we relaunched a website in Toronto with tens of thousands of products. SEO changes to the site’s architecture were completed a month ago. The result was a 45% increase in organic traffic to the site in the first 30 days. We are talking about thousands of potential new clients for the business.

Keep that number in mind (45% increase in traffic) the next time you think about pulling the plug on SEO before you get started. For every company doing SEO, there are dozens of others saying I could’ve , I should’ve or I would’ve but they won’t. And those are the companies who will be playing catch up for a long time to come.

Google Webmaster Tools now provides a single page where you can adjust the settings on your site.

The new settings page includes:

1. Geographic Target
2. Preferred domain control
3. Opting in to enhanced image search
4. Crawl rate control

Geographic Domain – tell Google if your website is associated with an even more specific area than your .com, .ca or .uk indicates.

Preferred Domain Control – Which domain do you want Google to crawl, the www (http://www.domain.com) or non www (http://domain.com) version.

Opting in to Enhanced Images -Allows you to use tools like Google Image Labeler to help improve indexing and search relevance.

Crawl Rate Control – Usually it is a good idea to let Google determine the crawl rate of your site but for larger, more advance sites you can let Google know if there are specific issues they need to address.

You may have missed the Google Analytics seminar in Montreal on Monday December 8 th and 9th, however, they are coming to Toronto in April 2009. You can keep track of the registration date and review the training material on your own or check get an RSS feed from the Wolf21 blog as we will be blogging about the seminar when the date is set.

With return on investment (ROI) on everyone’s minds during these difficult economic times, you need to stay ahead of your competition by making every penny count. There is no better place to start than Google Analytics.

And the bad news just keeps on coming for Rogers Communications.

Rogers Communications has just announced a vague number of employee cut backs. The looming recession was cited as the reason behind the cutbacks. The job losses were announced within the organization, the same day as the news of Ted Rogers’s death was making headlines across Canada.

Although Rogers is considered to be well positioned within the industry (many others have recently taken similar cost cutting measures), a steep decline in advertising spend has caused a tightening-of-the-belt across the Rogers multi-media empire. Job losses have occurred, and are reported to continue occurring at Rogers Media, Rogers Publishing, and at the Toronto Blue Jays franchise.

Currently, in midst of the major cutbacks that include employee jobs, travel allowances and restrictions, and personal employee spending, Rogers Communications is currently searching for a successor to the late Ted Rogers.

Rogers currently employs just less than 30,000 employees. About 100 positions are reported to have been cut and more are expected as we enter 2009.

A Fitch Media Study (free login to get to the content) expects online ad revenue to keep its head above water with single digit growth in 2009. Fitch also speculates that some cities will be without a daily print newspaper in 2010. Video and social media marketing will likely continue to grow while CPM will see a downturn.

As far as SEO is concerned, Google is expected to get more aggressive with universal search, providing searchers with more images, video, audio and user generated content.  How do you optimize for universal search?

From day 1, Google has pushed to provide users with relevant results and pounded into our brains that fresh, quality content will help you rank well in the SERPS.  Moving forward, Google will expect your website to provide the same info in a variety of ways people consume information.

Think of the latest hot novel that is out. I prefer an audio book to reading these days. I know, shame on me but it does save time. Others would prefer to wait for the movie while many still enjoy reading the book.  All are different ways that consumers enjoy the experience of the content.

Now, what can you do do adapt your website for the future of search? Start with video, add it to your website and then syndicate it with TubeMogul (free). You can answer questions related to current news items, deliver short training sessions or just try to build a relationship with your audience.

Last week, my post was entitled “Getting Comfortable with Social Media”. I would like to follow up that post with my top 5 tips for surviving and thriving with social media:

1. Know your audience

Social media is about more than simply knowing the demographics of your target market, or where they like to hang out online. To create an effective social media marketing campaign, you must identify with your audience and understand their underlying goals, ambitions, and thought processes. This is an absolute must if you (and I know you do!) want them to identify with you.

2. Social media requires research and planning.

With so many new platforms presenting themselves at breakneck speeds, it is easy throw caution to the wind and jump on board. While it is true that it is important to act fast, it is equally important to create a solid, long term social marketing strategy that fits into your overall plan, which brings me to my next point…

3. It is important to marry your online and offline marketing strategies.

Online strategies should always synch up with and support offline marketing activities and vice versa. A well thought out integrated marketing plan is an effective marketing plan.

4. Understand that effective social media marketing is permission based.

Advertising that forces itself upon, or distracts the end user will do more harm than good. Useful and relative content is key to getting noticed in a positive manner.

5. Effective Social media campaigns require a time and energy commitment.

Every once in a while, we all hear about the overnight viral marketing success stories that began with little more than a spark of creative genius. I personally cheer every time I here of these stories BUT this does not mean that you will necessarily recreate the instant success of others with little to no work or budget. If your social media campaign is not an overnight success, that does not mean that it is time to pull the plug and go wallow in self pity because social media has failed you. Measurable results, results with which you can track ROI usually take (and hopefully build) over time.

Of course, perhaps the most important element in social media marketing success is action! Create your online strategy and follow through. Until you do so, you are losing out on a huge opportunity to connect and interact with your consumers.

Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communications, has passed away in his home at the age of 75.

Ted Rogers has long been considered the epitome of entrepreneurialism. Since 1960, when Rogers first entered (and pioneered) the communications industry, Rogers had proved himself time and time again as an innovator and shrewd business man. Often, Rogers caught on to trends and innovations before others in his field could see the potential. This led Rogers to take brave and calculated risks with (usually) huge payoffs, eventually bringing Rogers to the status of one of Canada’s wealthiest and most successful entrepreneurs.

Rogers Communications is currently worth just under $20 billion and is employing almost 25,000 employees. This is thanks in part to Rogers having the foresight and determination to steer Rogers Cable in the direction of high-speed Internet, solidifying the company’s reputation and place as a leader in the field.

Ted Rogers is survived by his wife, Loretta, of 45 years, and their four children.

For more a little more info about the history of Ted Rogers, pick up a copy of his autobiography Relentless: The True Story of the Man Behind Rogers Communications.