marketing chatter

Posted on | February 23, 2011 | 3 Comments

• Tactics are the actual means used to gain an objective, while strategy is the overall campaign plan.
• The elements of a marketing strategy can be categorized into three sections – bought, owned and earned.
• In order to manage any task it needs to be able to be measured.
• Influencers, by definition are people that other people will pay attention to.
• There is no secret recipe for creating community enthusiasm. There is no blueprint. It is as organic and unique as the very community you wish to grow.
• The time consuming part is building relationships, interacting with people online and creating the content – whether that is collating content from ‘correspondents’ or a community project.

Does chocolate really cause acne?

Posted on | February 23, 2011 | No Comments

Does chocolate really cause acne?
‘Don’t eat chocolate, it will give you acne’ – this old wives’ tale has been doing the rounds for years, and still does, despite being debunked by scientists numerous times.
So what does cause acne, and can we do anything about it?
Acne vulgaris is a common skin disease that most commonly occurs in adolescents, but can occur in adults. Severe acne can be very debilitating for sufferers and not only causes acute embarrassment, but is also quite painful.
Acne is characterised by skin with multiple inflammatory pustules, cysts, blackheads and pimples, and is caused by a combination of hormones – usually testosterone – sebum production and bacteria.
Acne usually affects the areas of skin with the densest population of sebum-producing pores; which is why we see acne on the face, the upper part of the chest and the back. As the upper layers of the skin shed, they get trapped by excess sebum/oil in the skin, causing pores to become blocked and infected.
So while an occasional piece of chocolate won’t cause severe acne, it is always advisable to eat a balanced and healthy diet. Remember, the skin’s second main function is to detox whatever your digestive system can’t. So, if you load up with sugary, starchy foods, you create an acid environment in the bowel, and bacteria thrive on this!
There are a number of new acne treatments available over the counter, at skin clinics, and prescribed by doctors and dermatologists now, but do any of them actually work?
As many acne suffers will tell you, even acne treatments prescribed by dermatologists can end up irritating the skin, further inflaming acne. New research shows this is because when treating acne, many creams and lotions actually dry out and strip the skin, which causes more irritation and inflammation.
The latest research into acne care and pimple treatments shows the key aspect of effective acne removal is restoring the natural epidermal barrier that protects our skin.
The benefits of an intact epidermal barrier are often overlooked by acne clinics that use harsh cleansers containing chemicals like peroxide. With an intact barrier, facial acne is improved because oil production is normalised and there is less inflammation and sensitivity because environmental toxins, and other foreign allergens, are prevented from entering the skin.
So it seems the first step is to stop stripping acne-prone skin, and start restoring its natural balance.
Another new way to treat acne any where on the face, chest and back is with light therapy. Light therapy reaches deep down to the dermis, to kill the bacteria that causes acne while helping the skin to heal. The different wavelengths of light used are also an excellent acne scar treatment as they increase collagen synthesis, cellular renewal and connective tissue growth.
Previously, acne sufferers turned to treatments like microdermabrasion. But, according to experts, harsh exfoliating causes more acne. This is because microdermabrasion bursts a pustule and then spreads the infection around the face.
A new, better way to deeply cleanse and smooth is with ultrasonic. Ultrasonic cleanses skin with acne problems, without using abrasives or spreading the infection around. Instead, this new acne treatment uses sonic vibrations, which oscillate thousands of times per second, helping to lift dead skin cells, excess sebum and black heads, and improve circulation, for faster healing.
So next time you suffer from acne, don’t feel guilty about the piece of chocolate you ate last week. Instead, ditch the harsh chemical agents and look into the latest treatments that are now available across Sydney and Australia.

Written By Laser By Sia. For more information on how to get rid of acne, contact Laser By Sia on 02 8323 7510, or visit the Laser By Sia website. Laser by Sia is located in Bondi Junction and now in the Sydney CBD.

Social Media

Posted on | February 23, 2011 | No Comments

Social Media Sites are websites that are based around a community. Usually anyone can join, create a profile with their personal details, and share business or personal information with others. Popular sites include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo, LinkedIn and Flikr, however there are a vast and growing amount of others.

Social media is an integral portion of a successful SEO campaign in the current landscape. Social media profiles assist with brand exposure & recognition, relationship/network marketing, increasing visitors to your website and building links. The familiar social media icons are becoming increasingly visible on business websites globally and customers are coming to expect some sort of social presence. Most social media profiles are indexed by search engines and over the coming years we will continue to see an increase in both the integration of social media in the search engine results, and also an increase in the way the public utilise social platforms to research products & company information.

SEO Competitor Analysis

Posted on | February 23, 2011 | 6 Comments

SEO Competitor Analysis

It is beneficial to evaluate the strength of your search engine competitors. The extent that top ranking website have been optimised (competition), determines how much SEO work is required for your website to compete for a 1^st page ranking.

There are over 200 technical factors that are taken into consideration by a search engine in order to determine what ranking/position a website is given in the search engine results. Some of the most important factors are:

Domain Age: The age of the domain name (date of purchase). The older the domain the more trust & reputation that has been established with the search engines.

Page Rank: ‘Page Rank’ is Google patented scoring system that assigns a score to each page. The lowest score is 0 the highest being 10. You always want to achieve the highest score possible for each page of your website.

Domain Backlinks: The number of external links (back links) that point back to the website.

edu/.gov backlinks: The number of backlinks from education or government websites. These are often considered to have more ‘link weight’, as search engines give more trust to .edu & .gov websites. This extra ‘trust’ helps .edu & .gov websites to perform well in rankings with less SEO work.

Google Index Count: The number of website pages indexed in Google.

DMOZ Directory: A listing in DMOZ (a highly valued directory). DMOZ is the largest human edited directory. DMOZ is a Google directory. DMOZ listings are not guaranteed and it can take months for a listing to be approved.

Yahoo Directory: A Yahoo Directory Listing (a highly valued directory).  Yahoo offer both free and paid listings. A paid Yahoo listing is annual cost of $450 AUD. I recommend purchasing a link in the paid Yahoo directory as well as collecting a free link.

The remaining factors consider the level of ‘onsite’ optimisation:

Keyword in Title: Is the Keyword included in the Page Title

Keyword in URL: Is the Keyword included in the URL

Keyword in Description: Is the Keyword included in the Meta Description

Keyword in Header Tab: Is the Keyword included in the Page Heading

International SEO

Posted on | February 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

There are two main strategies for marketing a website internationally.

1. Have one large website that is a .com
2. Have multiple domain names that are country specific (com.au, co.uk, co.nz etc…)

One Website

Having a country specific domain is good for local search results (i.e. people in Australia may only want to buy from Australia), it also gives you flexibility to change the content (language, currency, keywords) to be relevant to the country that you are targeting.  It does however mean that you have multiple hosting bills and multiple websites to maintain.

Multiple Websites

A .com is the best domain name to rank internationally. However, having one large website is not good for local search rankings and many people think that delivery fees will be higher if they purchase goods from a business in another country. You can get around the currency issue by giving people the option to select their preferred currency before shopping and if you are not concerned with targeting multiple languages or having country specific content then you can also save on multiple hosting bills and website maintenance.

Recommendations

If you don’t have any specific countries that you would like to target but just want have a website that can rank internationally then I would recommend

A)    Purchasing a .com

B)     Offering multiple currencies

C)     Offer international shipping (including content on the homepage that you can ship world-wide)

D)    Build links from other international websites & directories

OR

A)    Purchase a .com.au

B)     Focus on building your business in the Australian market

C)     Consider expanding to multiple websites (or just the com) once you have established good rankings and sales in the Australian market.

It is also recommended that that whatever domain name you decide to purchase make sure you also purchase the other country specific domains, for both brand protection for a potential international strategies.

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