Archive for June 2nd, 2010
Marion Has the Products with Promotional Pizzazz
Posted by admin in Promotional Products on June 2, 2010
You see these items all the time – pens, caps, cups, t-shirts, and other goodies with a company’s name on it. You get them from various businesses and may use them around your house or office. Have you wondered where you can get them to help promote your own company? One answer is The Marion Group, of course!
The Marion promotional products website provides a vast assortment of items your company can use to help increase brand awareness. Items in our catalog help to:
- Improve traffic at trade shows
- Motivate staff
- Thank a customer
- Increase safety awareness
Available items range from mouse pads and pens to more exotic offerings like massagers and retractable earphones. The site divides the catalog into three areas: ‘Featured Items’, ‘New and Trendy’, and the ‘Gift Book’.
Browse our Promotional Products Catalog and find the perfect giveaway item for your company.
If you need help with promotional products or giveaways, email us at info2@marion.com or call 713-623-6444.
Have You Tried Google’s Latest Marketing Tool?
Posted by admin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization on June 2, 2010
Google is still remains a power player in the SEO and analytics game. Its newest effort, Google Insights for Search, is a new marketing tool that was set up to help marketers learn more about web search behavior. By typing in certain keywords, browsers can see many different statistics that have been searched for through Google, based on search volume pattern. Specific categories can be focused on and looked for as broad searches or broken down into much more specific searches, using the filtering process. This filtering process allows for marketers to look into four different search categories: web, image, news, and product search.
A key function that can be very helpful to marketers is the seasonality function. This function allows for companies to know when specific terms are being browsed for during the year, such as looking at t-shirts in 2009, 2008, and 2007. A drop box can be accessed to look all the way back to 2004 through to the present. If a specific year isn’t your option, then the past 7, 30, or 90 days can also be accessed.
Another helpful function of the website is the geographic distribution. Countries all over the world can be located. If a certain country is too broad, then the handy filtering process can pinpoint a certain region or city. Another thing to keep in mind, when it comes to looking at the geographical areas, is that a comparison of two different areas can be looked at, to see how they are either similar or different. For instance, if the United States is chosen, it will break down each state and rate it from a high to low search volume. Once a state in selected, a list of applicable cities will be given which will allow for an even more in-depth look.
When looking for the most frequently used keywords on the rise, there is a list at the bottom of the screen that gives that information. When a user researches the term energy drinks, Insight displays the terms involving energy drinks that are being used the most frequently and which terms are on the rise. This is an important marketing tool, in that a marketer can build a website with relevant keywords for SEO.
Google Insights focuses on providing insights into specific search patterns in the market. The filtering process allows for many different options to break down and analyze these results. Is Insight the site for you?
Has the Stinger Fallen Off for Google Buzz?
Posted by admin in Social Networking on June 2, 2010
Have you felt the buzz around Google’s new social network? If you haven’t, you aren’t alone.
Since our previous post, it seems Google Buzz has lost its sting and lost some of the honey. Only being released 4 months ago, the hype surrounding the new social media platform is already dying down. In its first 56 hours of release, and 9 millions posts made, Google saw sure success in its newly formed social network. Independently, the Chitika search network saw a surge of 1,500 searches on the term “Google Buzz” the day it was launched; 15 times more than its competition Twitter.
These large numbers of posts seemed sweet on day one but quickly turned into a sting for the site. Just one day into its launching, searches quickly diminished. Dropping to only 580 on February 10 and three days later, falling into single digits, Buzz seemed to be losing its sting. So, is this just another Google invention that received a huge outpour of attention at release, and will soon fizzle down into a thing of the past?
An issue being hit on the most with Buzz is the privacy implications. Upon the initial set up of a Buzz account, your immediate followers are people you chat with and email through Gmail. This stings the users. Someone can access your profile and see who you chat with or email the most. A simple solution: Once you create the Google account, it is important to go into your default settings and make changes. If it’s so easy for me to fix, why couldn’t Google fix it before they released it?
When using Twitter, your followers will be shown by default, but no one is selected automatically for you. When you do follow someone, you effectively review each and every person before you make that choice. The power of choice is given to you.
Google has proposed a possible solution to this problem. The company is looking at creating a “stand alone” Buzz site that people can access independently that would come on top of Buzz inside Gmail. This would allow for Buzz users to start fresh with a contact list instead of incorporating their whole Gmail contact list. The Buzz through Gmail would still be offered, but this new Buzz option would be available as well. However, in the months since Buzz’s launch, a stand alone site has not been launched.
Another downfall of Buzz over Twitter is when you make a “buzz,” it emails you a notification immediately. Why would you need an email buzz to let you know of your new buzz posted? A quick solution to this problem is to block your buzz email updates in your inbox. However this is just another problem Google didn’t bother to look at before they launched Buzz.
Hopefully, with Buzz still being a fairly new release, Google will find honey in a quick solution to these flaws before the sting is taken out of their Buzz.
For more information on social media marketing for your company, contact The Marion Group at 713.623.6444 or email us at info2@marion.com.
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