While launching a new site for family - and working at getting indexed - I’ve had chance to notice how quickly the Web 2.0 landscape has changed just in the past few months.

The strategy I’m employing for this quiet little launch is my transposting strategy - altered somewhat for the new domain. For the record, transposting didn’t allow me to completely ignore sites and not lose ground while I was away, but it did help me to maximize the little effort I could afford during that time.

If I’d known I’d be away so long I might have paid someone to manage things for me…

Since I’ll be writing a new report about this (as long as the tracking results measure up), and since I’ve been out of the loop and away, I’ve spent the last two weeks surfing around and finding out what I’ve missed.

Argh.

First stop was a promised-to-be-excellent free report that was touted as “I give it to my virtual assistants who do my marketing for me…” - released only a few months ago.

I didn’t check them all, but 7 of the hot Web 2.0 resources listed are no longer accepting new user registrations, altogether dead, or choking on the submission process. One hadn’t been updated since 2004 (gibeo), another not since 2006 (gravee). Not sure how they got on the ‘new’ list, or why the virtual assistants don’t say anything, but somehow the report was passed out to the world to use anyway. (Wasting time is my biggest pet peeve.)

But that’s the state of our world wide landscape.

The others not working correctly - in the last 24 hours at least - are sitetagger, scuttle, smarking, feedmarker, feedmelinks (going invite only), tailrank and unalog. Not sure how many of those were on the list, but listing them here so they show up as defunct in my own search results.

Is there a moral to this story Laura?

Why yes there is…

We need to start paying attention and really think our strategies through.

We need to learn to think for ourselves and not get caught in someone’s hype bubble.

We need to understand that ‘free’ sometimes costs more in the long run - because it wastes our time.

We need to not invest hours and days creating profiles and links and bookmarking hundreds of web 2.0 properties in the hopes that it will bring us traffic. Because some of those sites will crash or go out of business. Because choosing the right sites, with the right audience and the right features is really all that matters.

How’s My Little Site Launch?

I won’t give you the url, because it might taint my tracking results (or at least make my life more difficult separating real results from gawkers). I promise you the site isn’t worthy of a look anyway right now. (It’s ugly!)

The site was registered February 6th. It must have taken me 23 hits to install and mess around with the template and add 5 articles, as you’ll see below.

Yesterday, February 8th, I started playing with Web 2.0 traffic sources.

• I did not pay for traffic and I did not link to this site from any of my existing sites. This little baby is flying solo with a little Web 2.0 shove. (No list, no monetization on the site so you KNOW I’m not going to waste one of my clicks on it!)
• No plugins nor alterations to the theme (yet). Just a naked and ugly little site with nothing more than some re-purposed private label content that I’m sure has been kicked around the net hundreds of times in the past year.
• No one in my family knows about this site, including the person whose business I started this for!

But here’s something that’s very cool…

Registered February 6th around 9pm EST, already in google’s index by this morning, February 9th. I wish I’d thought to check earlier. The time says “20h ago”. I don’t know how to show you that, and include the date, without disclosing the url…so here’s a useless picture.

I’m pretty impressed.

Not with myself because I’ve had my head in an intranet these past few months and left my own training and marketing to whither on auto-pilot.

But with Web 2.0, still serving up great results, fast indexing, and a way for those with strategy on their minds to burst forth in their own market.

If you head over to marketingcharts.com you’ll see Nielsen’s recently released research on the top 10 Social Networking sites.

A few points of interest (for me anyway):

• MySpace is on the rise for traffic again. Great news for MySpace marketers, (60.1 million visitors in December, up from November’s 57.4 million uniques, and 55.3 million a year earlier). For the record I don’t ‘do’ MySpace but many other internet marketing writers are happy to share their findings on MySpace marketing.
• Facebook came in at #2 at (22.6 million, up from November’s $22.0 million, which is up 72 percent a year earlier).
• 2006-2007 Growth: MySpace +9%, Facebook +72%

This was interesting to think about…

While Google is #1 in web brands, Yahoo remains #2 with 113.2 million unique visitors in December. Nothing new right? But catch this: Time per person on Yahoo properties vs. Google properties: 3 hours and 5 minutes vs. 1 hour and 10 minutes.*

You’ll find more stats and research on Web 2.0 properties at the link above.

Chat soon,

Laura

* A brand is defined by Nielsen as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.

I’ve been doing some experiments lately with both newly registered websites and existing sites - utilizing the power of Web 2.0 for traffic.

The sites I’ve been working with are not just of various age, but in various niches.

This all started as a challenge when a local business owner told me that I couldn’t get him any more work as a result of online marketing than he could get on his own, down a hick town backroad, through word of mouth.

I’ve never liked it when someone told me I couldn’t do something. This was no different.

This became even more a challenge because his ‘thought-stream’ was backed and confirmed by his young University educated daughter. A 20 year old small town girl who’s never entered more than 2 words into google at a time and whose primary use of the internet is socializing on FaceBook.

“No one uses the internet to find local business, Dad.”

(Ugh, small town mentality.)

If I could find the research I read last month - that states 60% of North Americans would rather search for a company online than pick up a phone book - I’d wrap it up in a big box with a bow and send it to them.

As I mapped out a “I’ll prove it to you” strategy - the latest of which is my newly devised transposting - I decided to see if anyone else was teaching how to do this….

I’ve been a few months away from my machine and I’m happy to buy a course or report on this to stay current as well as learn from others since I don’t know everything.

Scouring the Warrior forum, buying latest releases and reports from other marketers, bouncing from one marketing blog to another - no one is talking about this stuff. Unless of course Howie Swartz (sp?) or Frank Kern are teaching it in their exclusive classes. (Two guys I could listen to all day as they’re as close to Hollywood in internet marketing as you can get.)

As soon as I get my small town business man some work and money through online marketing (and put both him and his daughter to shame) I’ll be writing a short step-by-step and screen shot proof on TransPosting.

If you are interested in reviewing the report before release, please contact me now. When I write these types of short reports, I don’t wait around or pre-launch, etc.

Also, if you find anyone else talking about Transposting (not cross posting thanks I already know about that), please give me a head’s up.

Yours in marketing,

Laura Childs

This may have been going on for a while, or just incorporated this week, but while I was scouring the web for Daytona 500 tickets on ebay today I happened to notice a few familiar icons below each auction listing.

eBay, one of the forerunners with Web 2.0 concepts, was one site that I had expected would take much longer to change. 6 years ago they were ahead of 99.9% of us, but now they’ve grown so large that making any changes takes as long as in any other corporation. 16 round table discussions, 14 tele-conferences, 795 shareholder votes (you do know I’m making these numbers up don’t you?) and before a year passes - innovation!

I saw four icons at the bottom of an auction. One was StumbleUpon. Since I was frantically bidding I didn’t stop to take a screen capture, or notice which auction, or if a set criteria caused their display.

Replicate it? Not at this hour. Perhaps it was a test. Only for email watch list updates. Or first time viewed. At any rate, expect to see those Web 2.0 icons to your auctions on a regular basis, soon.

————–
Update - January 28. The social marketing icons set out on ebay’s auction listings.

If you’re late on the bandwagon for Web 2.0 - and it seems that you’re not alone - and you plan on running your business online into the future, now is the time to crack down and fully understand the pulse of the internet.

Don’t worry if you are late to listen to the message. It seems hundreds of internet marketing trainers are just jumping in now as well - a full year since I published Stampede 2.0. And sadly, one of my favorite marketing authors is still taking the stance that Web 2.0 doesn’t exist. I do hope he’ll come around soon before his business slips into red.

If you don’t believe me (and the words I’ve been writing to you since last January), then who would you believe?

Would you listen to Bill Gates?

After all, so much of how we run our businesses, so much of what we’ve accomplished online for the last 10 years can be attributed back to Bill. There’s absolutely no denying today that the web is big, is here, is integrated into our lives - just as Bill predicted.

• comScore reported that $22 billion has been spent online during the first 44 days of the Holiday season (November 1-December 14)
• Online spending for the year (2007) is project to be over $200 billion. An increase of 20%+- every year, for the last 4 years.

Not just commerce and business. The net also has a hold on our youth.

• Future Laboratory reports that 18-24 year-olds would rather spend 15 minutes visiting social networking sites than watching the idiot box, or playing video games, or talking on their cells.

So back to big Bill.

If you’d seen the future as he saw it 12 years ago you’d be a rich man or woman today.

Perhaps as rich as Bill himself.

Who, by the way, is only months away from retirement.

Follow a leader. Heed a visionary’s words and advice.

In Bill’s January speech he shared his vision for the future, stating that advances in connectivity, high-definition video and audio will be the top driving forces for the next 10 years.

What does that mean to you if you’re not a tech company? What does that mean to a company with an online presence?

This. Give your user what they’ve come to expect from so many other online properties. No, you don’t have to be the next FaceBook to succeed, but you do need to incorporate Web 2.0 principles and strategies into your marketing.