It’s been a busy month here at the YPN Blog, and we’re sure you have also had many things going on. That’s why we thought it would be helpful to give you a short sampling of posts from around the blogosphere.

First off, the folks at MyBlogLog announced that they recently added a script for folks who want to use twitter with their MyBlogLog. Now folks can stay updated with you while you’re on the go!

Do you have a company blog that you have been ignoring? Well, stop ignoring it, and read Jennifer Slegg’s great article on why corporate blogs fail.

For folks who are feeling bombarded by all the information and content streams available today, you might want to read Publishing 2.0’s article on the web conservation movement. The basic premise is producing quality content and not just throwing up stuff on the web because you can.  As a publisher you want to make sure that visitors find your site information relevant and helpful.

Calling all you shutterbugs using Flickr on your sites! The Flickrblog has released this nifty “Share This” button.

Though not exactly a new announcement, it doesn’t hurt to remind you of all the many and powerful publisher tools available in your account.

– The YPN Team

News You Can Use from the Blogosphere

Search marketing and contextual advertising maven Jenn Slegg has posted an excellent short piece about how to choose anchor text for your incoming links. It’s vital stuff for driving traffic. Read on »

Boy, that Cat Seda’s got all the answers. My inbox this morning was graced by another of her useful posts—I’m a subscriber to her monthly newsletter, you see—this one offering several tips on using Yahoo! Answers to drive traffic. We’ve touched on this topic elsewhere, but Cat offers some fresh insight. Check out Cat’s blog for details »

Some of you may have noticed the new Search Suggest feature on the Yahoo! home page. This tricky bit of magic from the eggheads up at Yahoo! Search automatically offers search suggestions as you type your query. It’s actually kind of eerie, how accurate it is. I mean, I’ve got some pretty obscure interests (clean ones, OK?) and this thing picks them up right away. Read more about it on the Y! Search Blog and see what Barry Schwartz has to say over at Search Engine Land.

Finally, the Yahoo! Developer Network last week announced the release of a cool new open source tool that can help you troubleshoot and fix slow loading pages. “YSlow” measures web page performance and offers specific recommendations for improving it. Find out more on the YDN blog »

—Michael Mattis, Your NewsGrok Anchorman

Cat Seda’s new book offers a blueprint for Web marketing success

We’ve known Catherine “Cat” Seda for some time. A local gal who’s made good here in the San Fernando Valley, Cat has been an ocassional adviser to Yahoo! She’s also a veteran search marketer, author, columnist for Entrepreneur magazine, one-time skeleton racer and self professed “speed freak” whose ready smile can be seen just about anywhere search marketers, web publishers and other Internet entrepreneurs gather.

In her first book, Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (New Rider, 2004; $22.99), Cat detailed the ins and outs of paid search advertising, a work that, three years later, still stands the test of Internet time. In her new book, How to Win Sales and Influence Spiders: Boosting your Business & Buzz on the Web, Cat takes on the whole gamut of Web marketing and PR, from optimizing your pages for organic search to using social media to re-invent yourself as a guru in whatever field you choose to delve.

Pithily written and with copious, real-world examples (not anonymous case studies) How to Win Sales and Influence Spiders is a fast-paced yet comprehensive jaunt into the art of business promotion on the Web. Tightly organized and accessible, the book offers actionable information on every one of the book’s 240 pages.

I found Chapter 4, “Networking in Social Media” most intriguing, perhaps because it’s so new a phenomenon, but also because of the way Seda uses it to strengthen her main thesis. Namely, that every expression you make online or off should be a marketing expression that promotes your business or brand. Even something as simple an online profile created for a social media site like del.icio.us or MySpace can and should be an integral part of your overall marketing effort, and Seda shows how to create an effective one: Choosing a marketable URL, customizing your profile page design, creating compelling content, setting a friendly tone and, not least, leaving a “link trail” and more.

True, some experienced search marketers and publishers may find some of the basics old hat. But these offer the necessary grounding and a springboard for the gems that come later. If you think SEO and paid search are the be-all and end-all strategies of getting noticed on the Web, you need to be set straight. And this is the book to do it.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

Don’t Give Community the High Hat 

Big conferences don’t necessarily bring big surprises, especially in these days of geek overload and marketing hyperbole. But if you look hard enough you can find a few real gems of insight here and there.

Case in point: the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco last week. A solid show, to be sure, with lots of heavy-hitting keynoters and sharp-eyed exhibition-hall pitch-masters (as a well as a few characters, like The Human Creativity Project’s Julian Cash, at right). But the most practical tips for publishers were to be found in the sessions and workshops, and in the special and semi-spontaneous un-conference called Web2.0pen that went on in the wings.

While there were a number of good panels and presentations, a few stood out as exceptional.

The first was Media 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Transforming Traditional Media. This panel discussion was moderated by one of our favorite bloggers, Charlene Li from Forrester Research, joined by Gabe Rivera from TechMeme, Ted Shelton, who went from Personal Bee to Technorati just before the Expo, and Rich Skrenta of Topix.

Li opened the proceedings asking the now seemingly age-old question, “Whither traditional media?” Shelton offered that we are entering an era in which anyone can be a web publisher, and that as publishers we’re more often curating rather them developing or even aggregating content that appeals to users, whether it is user-generated or generated by other publishers. “Mobile Internet,” Shelton added, “will put the final nail in the coffin of print newspapers. Once you have a good reading experience, print will be done.”

All the panelists agreed that “audience aggregation” has surpassed content aggregation in importance. “Build your audience by focusing on their content needs, and everything else follows” was the mantra. The key? Curate your content from enthusiastic providers such as bloggers and users who are keen on your subject, and write about it for the love of it and for the glory of being heard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ten Easy Steps

As you may know, we’re all about helping you drive traffic. In fact, we did a pretty comprehensive series that was well received on that very topic (see below). But we don’t pretend to have all of the answers on how to drive traffic. Others sometimes know more than us.

Speaking of answers, did you know that you can use Yahoo! Answers to help drive traffic your site? Joel Caleb Thomas, a software engineer in India, certainly does. He recently posted an article to his LyeByte blog, “10 Steps to get Traffic from Yahoo! Answers,” that anyone who is serious about driving traffic should find useful.

Joel’s top tips include:

No. 1: Find a Category—”Yahoo! Answers is categorized, so look for the category which is relevant to your blog’s theme. If you take Lyte Byte for example, it’s related to Computers and Internet. There are so many categories, so obviously your blog will fit into one…”
 

No. 3: Answer with a Link—”Look out for questions which you can answer and give a link back to your site for more detail. When you answer, don’t just give a link, answer it in brief but…”
 

No. 6: Be a Top Contributor—”Yahoo! Answers also gives points for your answers. Two points for an answer, 10 points for the best answer and one point for voting an answer. As your points grow you [can] become the top contributor…”
 

No. 8: Lead Generation—”Apart from the traffic you get, Yahoo! Answers also gives lead generation. If you have ever wondered what to write about in your site, you will never run out of ideas now…”
Read the rest on LyteByte.com. Also, check out our series on driving traffic:

Signal to Noise
Leveraging Linkbait
25 Things to Think About Widgets
Secrets of WoMM, I
Secrets of WoMM, II

—Michael Mattis, YPN Answer Man

It’s official: Communitainment is almost a real word

The Internet is now a mainstream medium, according to research company Piper Jaffray & Co., which recently released a comprehensive report under the catchy title, “The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium.”

It doesn’t surprise me, because just a few years ago, the Internet was perceived as the medium of the moment. Now it’s the medium of record.

The study also found that the Internet is the leading medium at work and second at home, just behind TV. Internet reach continues to grow exponentially while the cost of both advertising and publishing decreases, making it more accessible to even the most casual entrepreneur. And with mobile and emerging platforms on the rise, greater reach is possible.

And that’s good news for you, dear Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser. Instead of looking for customers—which is what advertisers and publishers of the past had to do—now they come and find you.

Search is the second most commonly used application on the Web, with nearly 600 million searches daily. Today, search marketing is a $15.8 billion annual global industry, and it is expected to grow to $44.5 billion annually in the next five years.

With our new advertising system, which you may know by its code name, “Project Panama,” we’re empowering our advertisers with greater control of their campaigns. That means more control over campaign budgeting, scheduling and geo-targeting, which could translate to a greater slice of that very large pie noted above.

Communitainment?
The report, a whopping 425-pager (I read most of it—honestly), has also come up with an enchanting new buzzword: communitainment.

The Internet, says the report, has become a principal medium for community, communication and entertainment. This new activity, communitainment, is taking time away from other, more traditional types of content consumption on the Internet. Piper Jaffray names Yahoo! Answers as an example of communitainment.

Search, therefore, becomes one of the leading actions for communitainment. The analysis found that there are more than 550 million searches performed daily on the Web from all over the world, and that—get this—35 percent of all Internet searches are commercial in nature.

The success of search marketing follows a very commonsensical observation: Customers tend to act on an offer when they are actively looking for a product or service.

Consumers are now in Control
“The historically passive consumer is changing rapidly, not only becoming more informed and confident about purchase decisions, but also increasingly taking control of the consumption of information and content that used to be distributed by networks, studios, publishers and retailers,” says Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. “We believe this will cause a significant rise in prominence of the Internet as a major content consumption and marketing medium.”

In fact, the Piper Jaffray report placed Yahoo! as one of the top companies to watch in this arena: “The company is at the crossroads of changing its structure and embracing the User Revolution.”

Thanks for the kind mention, Piper Jaffray. But it’s our users who are the ones leading the charge. And as the new media landscape continues to develop, we’ll be working with you to be a part of it.

—Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

Yahoo’s Ian Kennedy Keeps His Eye on the Surprise

Ian Kennedy, one of our resident eggheads and a senior project manager here at Yahoo! Publisher Network, cast his roving eye on the South by South West confab this week and lived to blog about it. Highlights from his stream-of-consciousness postings include:

• The future of online magazines (interesting lessons for the publisher here)
• Topix’s talk about moderating online communities
• A case study on Lonelygirl15 (the Milli Vanilli-esque faux reality show that debuted on YouTube)
• The panel featuring our own Cody Simms on online publishing and ad networks
• Bridging the online culture gap

Plus lots more detail you’re not likely to find anywhere else. View Ian’s SXSW report: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four.

Also, check out Yahoo! Marc Levin’s SXSW 2007 photo album on Flickr.

—Michael Mattis

Charlene Li blogs about whether blogging’s worth it

Charlene Li, one of our favorite bloggers from Forrester Research, has posted about her recently-released Forrester Research report “The ROI of Blogging,” which she wrote with colleague, Chloe Stromberg.

The value of blogging to a brand has been one of those open questions ever since businesses and entrepreneurs began to put the form to use for marketing, PR and customer relations purposes. But should businesses bother to blog? Note Li and Stromberg:

While blogging’s value can’t be measured precisely, marketers will find that calculating the ROI is easier than it looks. Following a three-step process, marketers can create a concrete picture of the key benefits, costs, and risks that blogging presents and understand how they are likely to impact business goals. This, in turn, enables marketers to answer the key questions, such as whether to blog or not to blog, or to make smart choices about an existing blog.

Just how valuable can blogging be to a business? Is it worth the investment? Li and Stromberg say “yes.”

Among the corporate blogs that Li and Stromberg studied was General Motors’ FastLane Blog, the goal of which is “to share information about its products and to start a dialogue between GM leaders and customers.” A key metric, they say, is comments (which not all corporate blogs allow):

FastLane has about 100 people commenting on the blog each month, which is equivalent to gaining customer insight on products and brands from a traditional focus group. We estimated that the value of this was equivalent to running a focus group every month at the cost of $15,000 a month, or $180,000 a year. Voila—there’s the value of the blogging benefit laid out in black and white.

Although she admits their findings are somewhat subjective, Li believes that they have found “a starting point for an otherwise nebulous activity.”

We think blogging is definitely worth it, albeit with a few caveats.  Blogging represents a different kind of communication between businesses and their audiences—prospects, customers, the press and other interested parties—than traditional channels such as press releases or advertising. It requires a very different attitude, voice and tone in a networked community where the conversation is often two-way (and sometimes multi-way). A blog that sounds too much like a press release or looks like just another marketing vehicle is bound to fail. Striking a balance between getting your message across while serving the needs of your users and building community is critical.

For more, check out these posts on Charlene’s blog:

• New ROI of blogging report from Forrester
• Calculating the ROI of blogging
• Calculating the ROI of blogs – it’s not about the math

—Micheal Mattis, Blog Editor

What you told us about how you display ads on your sites

Editor’s Note: Since September of last year, we’ve posted a series of polls within our secure publisher interface asking a variety of questions on themes such as traffic, optimization and relevancy. Today’s post is the second in a series by Senior Insight Manager Todd Lombardo in which he will share your opinions and provide some pointers from Yahoo! team members, with the aim of helping you become a better publisher.

Following up on our previous post about optimization, below are the results from the questions we asked our readers. Our goal is to help you understand what your fellow publishers are doing, and get you thinking about how you can improve your own publishing experience.

Q: Where do you see the most successful ad placement?

Ads embedded in content is the clear leader, with almost half of you indicating that this is where you see the most successful ad placement, followed by leaderboard placement for about a quarter of responses.

These results were not surprising to the team here at Yahoo! Publisher Network, though we have found through our own data that the right rail also performs well. Check out this post from last May, where we discussed ad placement performance and eye-tracking studies. It does make sense that more visible ads—such as those at the top of a page or embedded within content—will perform better, though optimal ad placement will vary depending on individual sites and their user bases.

Here’s another question we asked you, this one about ad design:

Q: Do you find it more successful to select ad colors that blend in with your site or contrast?

It’s overwhelmingly clear that you design ads to blend into your site, rather than to contrast. We expected that the response would be more evenly split between “Contrast” and “Blend in,” due to the fact that contrasting ads may work better to gain attention. 

Blend in or stand out?
To gain further insight, we again tapped into our experts here at Yahoo! Publisher Network to provide some helpful guidance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Up-and-coming age group tuned-in, turned on

Top Forrester analyst and blogger, Charlene Li, reports that 24 percent of “Generation Y” reads blogs. Writes Li:

Gen Yers—18- to 26-year-olds who came of age with broadband, cell phones and iPods, among other things—stand apart from older generations because of their hands-on approach to the Web. Marketers trying to anticipate future consumer trends should tune in to Gen Yers.

 

One key data point that stood out for me: 24% of Gen Yers read blogs, which is twice as often as the 12% of Gen Xers (ages 27-40) and three times the 7% of Young Boomers (ages 41-50) that read blogs. So skeptics of blogs should suspend their disbelief and look to at least one bellwether demographic to get an idea of how widespread blog readership can potentially grow in the future… More »

Advertisers exploring the potential value of the long tail, take heed: the Gen Y demographic accounts for 28 percent of the U.S. population alone. Likewise, bloggers and other small- and medium-sized publishers ought to consider taking this tech-smart and affluent group’s wants into account when developing content and community.

For me, personally, there’s good news and bad news in Charlene’s findings. The good news is I can say to the blog skeptics out there: “Take that!” The bad news is finding out that I’m a “Young Boomer.”

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor