Marketing Technology Blog

Tonight I was analyzing some of the referring sites for my blog and I couldn’t help but see a statistic that stands out more than any other – StumbleUpon drives a lot of traffic to my site! There are a lot of bookmarking sites out on the web, but StumbleUpon has that one strategic advantage that none of the others have – they provide links by relative interest.

When you load the StumbleUpon toolbar (which you absolutely should), you stumble on sites and give them a thumbs up or thumbs down. As you generate a history, the sites that StumbleUpon sends you to next are matched based on your likelihood to give them a thumbs up. It’s a remarkable process that is very intelligent.

Perhaps more important than the number of visitors that StumbleUpon sends me is the fact that it’s a referring site with a very, very low bounce rate! About half of the people sent to my site click through to another post or page on the website. That’s a very low bounce rate, lower than any other referring site.

Unlike Slashdot, Digg, and the other major bookmarking engines, StumbleUpon really has the “Midas touch”, providing your blog or website with traffic that will find your content relevant based on the profile they’ve developed on your visitor’s likes and dislikes.

Big thanks to one of the other leading referrers to my website, Bittbox. They’ve sent more traffic from adding me to their blogroll than I would ever deserve for helping them out. If you’re a newbie or experienced graphic artist, be sure to check out the Bittbox site and sign up for their feed. It’s an amazing site with detailed tutorials and tons of downloads.

Notice also that Twitter is creeping up the referrals! If you haven’t set up a Twitterfeed or added an autoposting mechanism for your blog to get posted on Twitter, you must do it today!

This is an incredibly thorough analysis of online usage, advertising, dollars and comparable analysis to the economy by Mary Meeker, Web 2.0 Summit High Order Bit. My take away from the presentation is that Mobile usage continues to steadily gain adoption, providing a new avenue for companies to reach their customers. It’s why I’m optimistic for integrating mobile marketing to your sites and campaigns with firms like Connective Mobile.

Additionally, the slides provide a lot of proof that the growth of Search Marketing (organic and pay-per-click) will continue to explode in growth because of the measurable results and fantastic return on investment. It’s a key reason why I moved to my position at Compendium Blogware, a corporate blogging platform that provides both the application and the coaching necessary for businesses to gain organic search placement.

In the Pay Per Click arena, I have two friends – Pat East at Hanapin Marketing and Jim Brown at Evereffect – who are growing rapidly and executing strategic and integrated PPC campaigns that are continuing to provide a positive return on investment for their clients.

As a b-list blogger, you often become the target of business authors, software developers, and search engine opportunists who want you to promote their wares. I love being the target of this attention, though, because I love reading books and I love seeing applications out on the market. As a product manager, I recognize how difficult it is to take an able application and turn it into a wondrous application.

It’s not often, but every once in a while, you get your hands on something special. Software should be simple, easy to navigate, with functionality that anticipates what the user wishes to do next. Onehub is a breath of fresh air and has exactly what a user seeks in building out a project site that they would be proud to invite their clients to.

Onehub – Share Business Information

Today I received a note through my contact form from Laurel Moudy, Marketing Director of Onehub. The email invited me and 500 of my readers (read on for your invitation code) to try out Onehub at no cost. Ironically, at the same time I received the invite, I was also moving my email to Google Apps so I couldn’t confirm my registration. I had to wait until this evening.

The wait was worth it.

As soon as you log into onehub, the interface is striking, simple and heavily Web 2.0. Large, readable fonts with minimal controls and maximum whitespace hide the plethora of options you have to build out an incredible project site.

Your first option is functional – how will you be using the site?

Next up is how to design, layout and add the necessary components to your blog. The entire interface is built in a near-WYSIWYG style editor:

As soon as you design and add your components, the site is ready to go!

If you’d like to give Onehub a try, Laurel was nice enough to pass on 500 beta accounts, just use the invitation code marketingtechnology. If you’re an agency, designer, or web developer – don’t pass this up. This is a great application and very easy to use. If you’re none of the above – but you need a project repository and are not tech savvy, this is the perfect application for you.

This slide most likely produces moans and groans when I display it in front of my fellow techies. I have to show it, though. There have been very discreet movements on the web in the past. We had Web 0.0 which was basically text and bulletin boards. Remember those days? Waiting for the image to load line by line with your 1200 baud modem! (Yes, I know I’m old!)

Web History

Web 1.0 really became the hoard and control era. AOL (remember ‘enter keyword CHEVY) had a great grip on the net and more and more gateway sites appeared on the Internet. If you wanted someone to find you, it cost you dearly with a banner ad on a regional website.

Web 2.0 is still a control era – but now the Search Engines, namely Google, own the web traffic. We’re still in Web 2.0 today – if your site is going to be found, you better get it in a search result. The social web is now beginning to emerge, though. Folks are assembling and sharing bookmarks through micro-blogging applications and social bookmarking.

Web 2.0 saw the decline of peer-to-peer file sharing as well. Napster was toppled and the hackers, crackers and thieves had to go underground. Anonymous proxy servers and torrents through The Pirate Bay have jumped into the forefront as ‘free’ remains the price of the Internet.

Web 3.0 = Declining Search Dominance

Web 3.0 is next, and I believe it could be the Wild West all over again! Search engines beware as the people organize themselves, share their content through syndication (Semantic Web), micro networks, and hybrid applications that run on and offline and incorporate mobile usage.

Web 3.0 = Piracy

My vote is that piracy will make a HUGE leap as true peer-to-peer processing becomes common through IP addresses that are becoming more static across high-bandwidth home networks. In the days of Napster, peer-to-peer really meant peer-to-Napster-to-peer. Napster was the gateway for all communications. My bet is on micro-networks where you can link up your applications with trusted friends and send files without any server (outside of your ISP) knowing. The files themselves will be unrecognizable, though, through some cool encryption methods.

In other words, the common sharing of CDs and music drives between students today will move to applications that allow sharing without anyone in between. The pressure from the Music and Movie industry on the government will be HUGE to be able to spy on our home networks to try to track and punish this new wave of pirates. Good luck!

Web 3.0 = Direct Advertising

Along with the decline of search engine dominance, the advent of ’self-managed’ advertising will also grow. No longer will Google be skimming off the transaction between advertisers and publishers, new technologies will allow Advertisers to manage their own ads across the publishers they wish – and the publishers will be paid directly.