Thanks to the rise of microblogging, URL shorteners have become a league of their own. Sites like Bit.ly, TinyURL and others have managed to turn mile-long URLs into short, concise (and customizable) nuggets of text. So what’s the latest news with the tr.ims and is.gds of the world?

Recently, the big players have announced tools of their own. Google now has goo.gl, however they plan to monitor its use in the Google toolbar and Feedburner before deciding to make it a standalone tool. This could tone down its use for now, since other shorteners are highly accessible.

Facebook also just jumped on the train with FB.me. Mobile updates for Facebook are already using it to save characters in your SMS field. With more people tweeting and posting media to Facebook from their smartphones, FB.me URLs are starting to draw more visibility on Twitter, and in general. This could make it a more popular alternative to the other contenders soon enough.

But what can shorteners do for brands? From a content standpoint, it’s a great way to keep your messaging consistent with your campaign. In the old days, common practice would be to attach a long URL to the end of your copy, but that was such a mess for your audience. Bit.ly makes it very easy to customize your new URL. By tacking on a keyword at the end, you can help prevent your messaging from getting lost in translation. And just like hashtags, shortened URLs can be easily tracked, too.

A few sites have even adopted custom shorteners for their domains. Awe.sm is a platform that has made it possible for publications like TechCrunch and many others. When you consider the wide variety of platforms you’re utilizing to share your content, it’s a very impactful approach.

There’s no reason leave your URLs as a cryptic 2 to 3 lines of text. Create your own and share it!

 

User-generated content (UGC) is on everybody’s mind lately. From YouTube videos shot from a desktop webcam to hazy iPhone pics, it’s everywhere — and with tagging, it’s attached to everyone. The functionality behind Facebook and Twitter is making it easier to show and share UGC (and also turning MySpace into a vacant house party). Seriously, our eyes and ears are being forced to tune into a whole new channel of media. Why should marketers take it into consideration?

It’s You. In the world of social networking and UGC, everybody’s famous. The most addictive thing is finding yourself or a friend included in a public photo or video and observing the response. Think of the thrill when you get a notification that someone “tagged a photo of you.”

It’s Fast. Pictures take seconds to look at, while videos are in the ballpark of a minute to watch. Users know that when they find it, it’s worth their gratification because it’s less time consuming. It beats sitting through a 30-minute TV program just to reach the end and decide it was a bad episode (and that it’s also time for bed).

It’s Flexible. With the use of apps and editing modules (check out the Trans-Poser we designed for the Dell Lounge), creating new pics and videos from the originals is more accessible lately. There are tons of other open-source tools like Audacity and LiVES that give you the power to edit audio and video, without having to purchase top-of-the-line software to do so.

It’s the Start of Something. From there, UGC is all yours to recycle, mashup, blog and boast about. People love to start the drum roll for new info and entertainment, and that’s where the success stories happen. Sometimes it’s a blog, sometimes a YouTube channel, while others evolve into personal brands like Perez Hilton and Hipster Runoff.

Granted, UGC may be the new “arts and crafts” of the web, but with analytics hitting the millions, it’s important to understand where people are focusing their attention today and how to reach people with a product or campaign.

Welcome to (your non-English speaking country here), where the weather’s great and the tourism flourishes. Speaking of tourism, are you preparing to drive traffic to your international website? If it’s not going like you thought, check a few things on the technical side to help improve your visibility with international SEO.  

Put the Language in the Meta. ID your language in the global meta tag. This is an easy way to specify the main language of your content:

<META Name=”content-language” Content=”FR”>

Don’t Just Translate. Performing an exact translation of your website through Google or other tools isn’t always the way to go. Most people go this route to get ranked on international SERPs, but try to avoid making these tools your solution: exact English translations of other languages don’t make sense in many instances.

Link Up with Your Region. Common SEO knowledge will tell you the more hyperlinks coming to your site, the better the ranking, so apply the same science with your region and ensure other international domains are linking to your site.

Host Is Where the Heart Is. If possible, keep your hosting inside the country you’re localizing for. Search engines recognize IP addresses automatically — it never hurts to have those addresses defining the proper location.

Define Your Domain. For example: when I build out my Austrian/German site is it www.premiereglobal.com/de or www.premiereglobal.at/de/? I linked off to the second in this case. If you’re a big brand or corporation with enough presence in the country, you’ll want to use it in your TLD (top-level domain). For smaller companies, it’s more practical to use the subfolder in your domain and geo-target the respective pages.

Take these pointers and run with them for visibility. Soon folks will be linking, sharing and talking about your brand’s site in more languages than you can think of.

As your clientele goes global, you’ll eventually come to the point of repurposing pre-existing websites for international audiences. However, it’s not as easy as “Let’s turn those English words into French and wham! We have a French site.” Polishing the content on your site for international SEO is a key step in order to reach regionalized demographics.

Does Anyone Speak English?
The English language isn’t the most popularly used language on search engines today. Interesting fact: 70% of all worldwide search is not in English. China also loves the search engine, with 2008 stats that show a yearly growth rate of 33.6% for search. Thus, all over the world people are looking for information in their own way. 

Localize It
Naturally, people search in their native idiom. If you’re speaking a different language, you’ll need to localize your content to cater to your audience. Those who have traveled abroad understand the variations in other English-speaking countries when it comes to words.

Consider the following: British speakers prefer references like “queue up” instead of “line up”. This tiny twist in your copy or header is less likely to get buried in millions of page rankings. It also speaks to the handful of countries that follow the British variation of English.

So, think you may need to reassess your content for an international audience? We’ll go a bit deeper in Part 2 about form and function. 

Web readers are on an inevitable rise. Print publications are transferring their decades-old names to their respective .com sites faster than the daily news. Let’s face it: the web is our favorite source for instant information.

The impact? Today’s readers essentially don’t have time to read. They need persuasion and need it fast. While your marketing objective has a dozen things to say, you’ll need to do it in about ¼ of the bullet points AND in about ¼ of the time. Good headlines entice the users to read on, click through and of course, increase conversion rates. Here are a few hints to the game of interactive headlines:

• You’re directing users, so be direct. Lead in your healthy headlines with verbs. Instead of “The Greatest Marketing Tool on the Planet”, try something like “Discover the Greatest Marketing Tool on the Planet.” Once you combine verb-savvy copy with design, you’ll find a page that speaks loud and clear.
• Questions make curious. Swift, conversational copy can be executed with loaded questions, ex: “How’s the Agency Newsletter?” Stimulate the reader’s interest with a short, condensed question. Remember Got Milk? Probably one of the slickest conversational headlines you could ask for (no pun intended).
• Make it believable. Advertising guru David Ogilvy will have your back on this one. Don’t fluff up your headline with over-inflated hype. Too much noise and shock-value can make a person feel spammed or turned-off. Make it sound tangible and informative. Isn’t that why the audience landed on your site in the first place?
• 10-word rule. Probably more like 7 or 8. As stated earlier, readers have a short appetite for words, but a hearty need for information. If your headline is too verbose, you’ll find it not only trumps your design layout, but also takes too long to read. Zzzz…
• Get your keywords in. Headlines are the 1’s and 2’s of anchoring your audience, or to your development maestros, H1s and H2s — just check out my Insight article on writing for SEO. Throw in a few keywords while still being creative with your messaging, and you’ll add some perks to your SEO, since 9 times out of 10 your headline will be coded as an H1 or H2 tag.
  

Have fun with your headlines, but keep in mind the time it takes to create them can take about as long as the body copy. It’s quality over quantity. Take time to make a few versions and run them by your editor to see what sticks. Remember, it may grab your attention when you’re cruising through the web, but not others. Happy writing….