As many other companies, we're looking to find the most efficient way to manage our social media marketing (SMM). SMM can be very time consuming, updating and managing all of the different social media platforms. Imagine, writing a blog, and having that post sent out to all of your different social media platforms, with a link back to your original blog post. Imagine being able to see when people interact with your different social media profiles all from one interface. At Bonsai we're exploring some of the NEW platforms that are out there. If you're interested in the results, let me know and I'll send you what we find.

Pay Per Click Advertising is touted as a great way to reach your target market. Nobody know this better than Google, Yahoo and Bing. Well, "if I were Microsoft" I would set up strategic Pay Per Click advertising campaigns on Google and Yahoo. You want to talk about reaching your target audiance. As an avid Googler I will say there are some things that bing does do better, you can't be all things to all people, although Google will certainly try. So, if Bing advertised on Google for the things they think are better and drove traffic to their search engine they will have a great opportunity to change the minds of a highly captive engaged customer, whose lifetime value could be in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Microsoft spent $80 million advertising Bing. Imagine they spent 1/80th of that budget on PPC. Let's just say they spent an average of $5 per click, they'd get 200,000 users to go to their search engine and try their search engine out!

What about the number of impressions? Let's say on average the Click Through Rate for each ad was 2.5% which through some forums seems to be a conservative average. That would mean they would get 8,000,000 impressions! How much would Bing have to spend to get the same number of impressions on a TV advertising campaign ??? (also consider production costs). How long would it take to produce the commercials and spread the content and get 8,000,000  

What's the best way to design the usability of an iPhone app?

As iPhone applications have become more and more popular, their have been a few different navigation designs implemented. The idea is to make your application as easy, intuitive, and effortless for your users. Allow them to access the informaiton they're looking for as quickly as possible. The benefit of doing so? More people LOVE your app! And who doesn't enjoy being loved? When people love your app, they tell their friends and spread the word about your awesome app.

In this blog I'm going to explore 2 popular iPhone application designs and the pro and cons of each. The first is the standard standard Apple design and second, the Facebook inspired "Tiled icon" design.

Standard Apple Design

The "standard apple design" is marked by a bottom icon navigation, lists, and detail pages.

The bottom navigation consits of links to different sections or functionality of the applicaiton. This is exmplified by the phone application as seen to the right, but it's the same with the iTunes application and App Store applicaiton. There is a bottom navigation that allows you to get to your "Favorites" "Recent calls" "Contacts" "Keypad" and "Voicemail." For insatnce when you click on "Favorites" you're provided your list of favorites, where you can A) call the contact or B) click the arrow to get more information. Let's focus on the arrow for more info as it is more generally applicable to most applicaitons.

When you click on a list item you're taken to, in this case a details page, Where you can get more information and take action (text, share contact, and add to favorites). This is seen in the image to the left... Details pages could be information about a local restaurant, their menu, hours, location, phone number etc. 

Pro's: it's standard (many other applications use the same layout). It's easy to get to the information you need.

Con's: There's a limited number of "Main sections" you can include in the sub navigation. This can limit what you can include in the application.

Considerations: Make sure the information is grouped correctly and organized correctly. The last thing users want to do is go down a path only to realize that's not where the information they want is at.

Facebook Inspired "Tiled icon" Design

There's a new iPhone application design on the web. This new design style was first indroduced by Facebook (to me anyways there may have been others first). I have named this style the "Tiled icon" design. The navigation elements in this case are icons that are aranged in tiles or grids as seen by the facebook application to the right. The icons even give updates to activity in each section. The nice thing about this design is that it helps visually communicate what you can do with the application, by use of the icons. In addition the layout utilizes the iPhone home page multi page layout design whereby you can flick or swipe the screen left or right for additional pages with more icons to other sections of the app, in this case the facebook applications or friends profiles you go to often.

Finally let's look at the "Tiled Icon's" detail page and see how the navigation is handled. As you can see from the image to the right, which is the landing page when clicking the "Profile" icon on the previous page (image). The navigation on the facebook design then goes to a variation of the bottom navigation, in this case going with 3 buttons to more information and details page.

Pro's: Allow's you to add many main sections for users to navigate to. The icons help visually convey what that section of the application is (... what functionality or information you should expect). It allows you to get a dashboard look at the application, what's going on in that section.

Con's: It's new, this is a new layout and will require the user to learn the new interface, however small the learning curve, it still requires they learn.

Considerations: Make sure it makes sense. I like this layout, but I also like pushing the envelope, when you chose your applications navigation and design you'll need to consider your user first

Conclusion

Both layouts serve a function and have pro's and cons. Both layouts use an icon in one form or another. The key is to make sure whatever layout you chose, it makes sense for your users. They just want to access the information they want to access as quickly as possible. This can mean having the opening page of the application be the last opened page by the user... Or maybe it's your business model to feature items, have your featured items page be the opening page... You definitely have to balance your users needs and your objectives for the applicaiton but remember if your users don't like it or don't find it useful they won't use your app and probably talk crap .

What do you Think? What layout designs have you seen, what do you like, what do you dislike? I'll open up the conversation and duke it out over the perfect app design.

Branding is not a name, it's not a logo, it's not a brochure, it's not a web site, and it’s not what you say it is. Branding is what your customer says you are. If you don't believe me I highly recommend you read Zag. If you do believe me, you must be smart, good looking and very successful. Debating regarding what Branding is aside, under the assumption that branding is what your customers and potential customers say you are, What are they saying about you? What do they call your industry? You call your industry thermo graphing they call it thermo imaging. Now where could you get this kind of information??? You could comb through the millions of blogs out there until you find someone who is an "expert" who gives you some feedback on your industry if you're lucky. You could check out yelp, and the hundreds of other review sites... But wouldn't it be nice if there were one place you could go to find this kind of information out... wait, there is. It's SEO. In Search Engine Optimization we look to see what people are typing in to find your services or your company. Think about it, all the millions and millions of people using Google. They're all typing in searches for services and products. It's interesting, the way our clients describe their services and the way their customers are searching for them can be quite different. Who wins? The customer is always right, right? In this case, absolutely and for SEO what's the point in optimizing for terms you think are relevant, save your time, search for the terms you customers are searching for. Back to branding, your customers are telling you what they think of your industry by the way they're searching for it. Keep your ears to your SEO and you'll have a pulse on your industry. If you seem new terms growing in popularity, you'll see a shift in customer perception and values.

I've been talking branding at a industry level it also works for some larger brands as well, where there is enough search info. You can also check your analytics for the keywords people are using to reach your web site.

5 steps to choosing highly profitable keywords for your SEO or PPC campaigns

This is guide for choosing the RIGHT keywords for your SEO or PPC campaigns. People always ask me how do you know what my customers are searching for. My response, it's a combination of brainstorming and then using the tools that are available.  It is important that you first brainstorm keywords and then use keyword suggestion tools to expand your list and look for new opportunities... BUT today I'm not here to tell you how to create a list of keywords a mile long, I'm here to teach you the secrets I've learned about choosing keywords that are highly profitable.

1. Write down your USP or Unique Selling Proposition. What differentitates you from your competition? Now brainstorm keywords that align themselves with your USP. If your USP is that you're the only company that offers bilingual services then brainstorm keywords related to your service and your bilingual capabilities.
2. Write down the pain point or problem your product solves... At what point do your customers realize they need your product.
3. The Customer Buying Cycle - The buying cycle gives you a progression of how a customer goes from not even knowing your product existed to purchasing and using it. Write down each stage of the buying cycle and brainstorm keywords for each stage.
   1. Awareness - The moment when your customer first realizes they need "something" to fix their problem. Keywords associated with this stage often include "how do I." This is where the customer first starts thinking about what keywords would bring them the best search. What impacts their their keyword clarification? It's different for every factors. They start thinking about what they know about a potential solution, or what they'd want. They may think they want a solution that isn't what you do, if you optimize for it, you can make them aware about your industry. Being that they found that valuable information from you, if they're going to purchase from anyone wihtin your industry they will most likely purchase from you. This is a huge opportunity.
   2. Information search - What keywords are associated with customers educating themselves about your industry? Write them down. Think about this, what if you could educate your customer on your industry? YOU CAN!
   3. Alternative evaluation - What are the alternatives within your own industry as well as others that will solve the customers needs? Write them down. What are the keywords associated with this stage? Write them down.  Think comparison charts. Compare the different types of solutions, I'm sure your solution will be the best ; )
   4. Purchase decision - These are the most competitive keywords. They're the keywords searchers use right before they make the purchase. These are generally very specific keywords, albeit very expensive to acheive top rankings. When your customers make a purchase what keywords are they using?  
   5. Post purchase behavior - This is a really interesting one to me and a fun one to target. Here you can target words that help your customers find the infomation they need to use your product... Or consider this, consider that they went with a competitor and are trying to figure out how to do xyz, they do a google search and your web site comes up on how it is possible to do xyz with your product. Also how many times do you make a purchasing decision and realize it was the wrong one...
4. ASK YOUR CUSTOMERS if you're not asking how your customers found you, start doing that immediately. If you are and they tell you they did a google search, ask them what keywords they used to find you. I'd also ask just about everyone you know, you'd be surprised how diffferent people search.
5. Now you've got a pretty comprehensive list of keywords time to see how often they get search and at the same time see what googles keyword suggestion tool says. In this step I'd place all your keywords in one column of a spreadsheet with another column to the right titled demand. Use the Google Keyword Tool to figure out the demand.  On the Google keyword tool selec the, Choose columns to display: Show estimated average cpc, this will give you an idea of how competitive the keyword is.

Remeber you want to find and target the keywords that are the most profitable for your company. Often times when you try to get the hole pie you end up getting none of it. Target the peice that makes the most sense for your business. I hope you've found this useful, I'll be doing more blogs on selecting good keywords.