www.davidrao.com

Now that hundreds of millions of people use the internet each and every day of our lives, marketers are trying to find ways to makes sure that every second counts. Through the use of Webmaster Tool’s by Google, marketers are about to see issues such as: the most important keywords on a particular page, if your page contains any malware, internal and external links etc. With this vital information marketing companies and more effectively manage a clients website.

When looking at Webmaster tools hooked up to my website I can start to see statistics regarding a lot of things that we have discussed in class. I am able to see through the search queries results that “love JMU” is one of my most important top searched results on my page, followed by my actual name David Rao.

When looking at the Webmaster Tool’s it is important to make sure your website doesn’t have any malware or hacking issues that could potentially infect your customers or viewers computer. Luckily, my site doesn’t have any malware issues. It’s also important to make sure your site doesn’t have any “crawl issues”. Meaning that Google spiders were unable to crawl on the back end of your website to search all of its content.

When looking at all the Webmaster Tool’s offers and what we have learned in class I think if I could pick one thing to learn more information about it would probably be help with creating URL destinations. I think that my search results might be a bit higher if I was able to come up with better URL destinations.

Until next time…Live each day like its your last!

Normally Dr. Clarke’s Internet Marketing class tends to be very informative and lectured based. However, this past week our Mktg 470 class was very fortunate to have Lindsay Crone as a guest speaker. Lindsay was a graduate of JMU in 2008 and her current job is at The Search Agency (TSA).

It was a really good re-enforcer to everything that Dr. Clarke has been teaching us through out the semesters regarding internet marketing. Lindsay provided us with a lot of testimonials that really completed the circle so to speak in terms of how we could potentially use this information in a work environment.

During Lindsay’s lecture she provided hands on experience of different clients she has worked for at TSA. One of the main things I took away from her lecture was how she really takes her job seriously and really enjoys her job. A lot of people are just taking 470 as a required class and don’t really understand the importance to some of the assignments but after listening to Lindsay I think a lot of peoples thoughts might have changed. Her biggest client is 1-800-Flowers. She knew every single detail for the most part regarding this account. For instance she stated that this one client has over 750,000 keywords alone! She actually knew the exact number! According to Lindsay she is almost obsessed with her job trying to do something so small to the copy or the ad to see what the change in results would be.

It was really good to see someone with so much passion for their job. Not to mention she had a lot of positive things to say about us “upcoming job seekers”. She definitely extended a helping hand to all of us and we needed any help finding a job.

From one Jmu-er to another. Sincerely Thank you for coming to speak to us!

What is retargeting you ask? Retargeting advertising is a form of online tracking. When a person visits a website for say an NBA jersey a cookie is placed on that particular computer’s browser, then when that computer is used again the advertising system creates and ad for the same NBA jersey. Does that sound creepy to you? You’re not the only one! By using the internet and your browser you are pretty much being tracked throughout your entire online experience. From the websites you visit to the merchandise you purchase. Online marketing companies know how long customers have been on a site, how many pages they have viewed on a site, etc. A great example of a company that does this is Zappos.

Coming from a marketing background at JMU, I feel like retargeting is a very clever marketing tool. As a marketing major, I’ve learned that customers must see a product 3-4 times before they decide that they want to purchase it. So therefore it makes sense for these online companies to use retargeting advertisements with their customers.

As far as privacy issues are concerned, I feel like everyone has issues with privacy. By using retargeting advertising companies are tracking a customers every move online. I think it’s a 50/50 split in that 50% of people prefer the tracking to make their lives easier but the other 50% hate that companies are following their every move. Some people personal opinions can be found here: Opinions on retargeting.

I do believe that the future of retargeting is a promising marketing strategy. I think that with today’s technology customers’ love feeling special and remembered. So what better way to feel remembered and special then having the computer remember who you are and what you recently looked at online? As with anything technological only time will tell.

Over the past year and half I have been part of a company called One Shirt Apparel. It was originally just a fundraiser under another company but after a lot of success it was then turned into a limited liability company registered in Virginia. There has been some ups and down in my personal life that has hindered the performance of the company but in the last 2-3 months I have really focused on getting the company to where it should be.

I have recently hired what I call the, “One Shirt dream team”. One Shirt hired a top web designer from Sony music entertainment, a New York fashion designer to help design the shirts, a public relations firm to handle all of the news media, and a top notch Internet marketing company. It’s definitely been a crazy month. One Shirt is schedule to launch it’s new website at One Shirt on the 20th of March. One Shirt was also invited by AMA to New Orleans during March 22-24th to participate and give speeches on fundraising to over 400 different colleges across the country. This could be huge for One Shirt because one of the last college fundraisers a soriety in GA did grossed over $11K and raised over $5k for a non-profit organization called Veterans’ Hope. Needless to say 400 multiplied by 11k would be over 4 million gross and over 2 million donated to people in need.

With the new website launching this week, One Shirt is releasing its first line of apparel. The series is called, “The First Responders”. One Shirt created a shirt for firefighter, police officers and EMT’s. We also redesigned out Veteran’s t-shirt to go along with our new theme and feel of the website. I’m looking forward to see how everything works out. Will keep you updated.

Until next time…Live each day like its your last.

This blog hits the nail right on the head. There are many ways to advertise online these days. From Google to Facebook to even Yahoo and Bing. However with this blog I would like to share some hands on experience with using Facebook advertising on a Fan page. Obviously by now everyone knows that all of these fortune 500 companies are creating fan pages on Facebook to gather as many fans / likes as possible so then they can connect with those people all at once with out any cost (once they’re fans). My hands on experience comes from about a year or so ago when I was helping out a non profit organization called Veterans’ Hope. During this time Veterans’ Hope ran a campaign on Facebook to help gain fans and like on the Veterans’ Hope page. Facebook made it really easy to set up the advertising and capture the target market Veterans’ Hope was after. Veterans’ Hope budgeted $250 to advertise on Facebook. In 30 days the campaign ran, the page gained 1,000 fans. Not a bad investment at all! $0.25 cents per new fan. Now here comes the funny part… I’m not exactly sure what changed during the last year at Facebook regarding their advertising costs but they definitely increased a lot. When launching my new company, One Shirt Apparel, I budgeted $1,000 for Facebook advertising. Due to past results I forecasted that with that budget One Shirt’s Facebook page would gain around 5,000 fans which would be a great start. However little did I know that this wouldn’t be the case. I built the campaigns similar to the ones I did with Veterans’ Hope (obviously with One Shirt’s content) and set the same CPC and daily budgets. With One Shirt’s page I spent $250 for around 260 new fans or around $0.96 per new fan. Needless to say I quit running the ad due to the new costs. I still haven’t figured out why it was like this but plan to give Facebook another shot in March with the launch of One Shirt’s new website located at www.oneshirtapparel.com. Check it out on Facebook (One Shirt) and make sure to like us so I don’t have to pay $$$ for advertising and can donate more money to a better cause.

Until next time…Live life to the fullest each day.

Prior to starting this semester I didn’t have anything to do with social media personally. Granted I did have Twitter and Facebook fan page for my apparel company but not personally. While I still do not a personal Facebook page I was obligated to get a Twitter for my Marketing 470 class. After completing a few assignments through Twitter I still did not see the value in it. However, this past assignment that we had to complete was to spend an hour or more just browsing around on Twitter and exploring all of its features. After spending about and hour and a half non-stop I can definitely see why Twitter is the new Facebook. I think that the value in Twitter comes from the capability to reach the masses almost instantly. For example, if you tweet a message and have 30 followers that message goes to 30 people but if one of those 30 people has say 1000 followers and re-tweets your original message now 1030 people see your message and so on. I also think another advantage to Twitter is the fact a lot of celebrities and influential people are on it tweeting to their fans. This could potentially get you a once in a life time opportunity. I think Twitter is a very valuable asset to marketers. I feel this way because marketers can easily promote a product or help build a brand just by tweeting a few messages and getting more and more followers to re-tweet their message. This is similar to “sharing” something on Facebook. Not only can people tweet on Twitter but they can also read everything that is currently trending online along with the News. All and all I think Twitter has and will continue to play a huge role in the way we communicate.
Until next time…live life to the fullest!!!

As part of an assignment for my Marketing 470 class, we were required to break away from the normal Whitehouse theme and select a new theme for ourselves. The theme that I choose is called zeeSynergie. This theme was designed by ThemeZee. I selected this theme because I felt that it was a very simple “bloggy” type layout. I also liked the image in the header with the money signs and the fish swimming towards them. I think the white background with the dark gray tabs makes the tabs standout to show my readers what I’m blogging about and the content on my page. Overall I really like the new theme I have chosen. The nice thing about this theme was that when switching from the Whitehouse theme I didn’t lose any of my information (widgets, blogs, twitter, etc). It was a very simple and easy transition.
Got to run! Until next time…live life to the fullest!

Welcome to my blog.  I am currently enrolled in Strategic Internet Marketing (MKTG 470) taught by Dr. Theresa B. Clarke at James Madison University.  As one of the course requirements, all students will be completing some of the assignments as blog posts.  This is my first official blog post for Dr. Clarke’s course in the JMU Department of Marketing.