Social Media Slip-Ups That Can Wreck Your Brand

Friday 2/5/10 - Heikki @Moogo

Everyone makes mistakes, but it’s not very often that those mistakes are seen by millions of people. Social media and the web especially provide us full disclosure into the failures of not only individuals, but companies as well.

Thinking a lot about the both the best use and the abuse of social media is something that I do on a regular basis. Of course it's a part of my job description to do so, but even when we are outside of our cubicles, we are witnesses to the triumphs of social media, but also to the complete nuclear meltdowns that occur in its deep (web)space.

As individuals, we know what's right and what's wrong. As individuals representing a company, we know we're supposed to do in social media. Most of have been instructed and educated in its etiquette and finesse, but of course goof-ups do occur. That being said, instead of listing the do's, let's focus on the don'ts. So here we have it: how to demolish your corporate brand using social media.

No blog clause

This is your product's internet real estate, so you better have your 'house on the market'. It's the place where customers try to come to know about your product or service. Putting regular updates regarding the product makes the customer understand the real value of the product and it helps you get feedback.

The hard sell

If you are commenting on someone else's blog, don't leave comments that are really “adverquestions” or “introtisements”. Brass tacks: it’s cheesy and people see right through you. Additionally, it will get you moderated and banned if you keep doing it. There are places on the web for pitches and sales, like in press releases, landing pages, and Google AdSense ads. The pitch isn't welcome here.

Evangelists-for-hire: a faux pas

Ahh, the backlash that big brands have experienced when they secretly hired people to evangelize products or companies. Think and read about these two bad boys for example: Sony and Wal-Mart

Showing up as Willy Loman

When ever you pop your head out into the world, and decide to participate in the web 2.0. community, make sure you approach people as a person first – even if the reasons were completely commercial. People connect with people, not with brands, sales associates, marketing managers, brands or products.

Parroting out words

Just blatantly parroting other people's thoughts and words onto your blog isn't doing anything good. Of course it's only natural to be influenced by the great minds of t he blogosphere and social media, but it's always good to bring new thought to the table. If that can't be done, your brand is pretty much destroyed already, because you never had one to begin with.

Being frienemies

This applies especially to Twitter, where people just go indiscriminately adding strangers as friends And then they usually proceed to spam these people or unfollow right after you follow them back. Not only are these folk the bottom feeders of the social food chain, but also this type of behavior might get your IP address banned from the service

Customize, don't stagnate

Facebook is not MySpace. Twitter is not Wordpress. Linkedin is not Naymz. Every social networking site is different and you should create a different strategy for each site you decide to engage in. The strategy ought to be customized to that site’s specific rules and code of conduct. Trying to run a one-size-fits-all approach will limit your chances of being successful

Expand Your View on the Internet with Google Social Search

Wednesday 2/3/10 time 7:23 AM - Helena @Moogo

You might have heard that Google is your friend. Doesn't matter what you're about to ask from your colleague, a friend or a family member - you just might want to consider to Google it first.

Whereas Google has paved the way in the search engine universe, it has also improved its services by adding an option of social search. It was first announced in October 2009 and has been talked about quite a lot since then. The bottom line is that if you really want to know what is talked about out there about you, any product, company or just about anything else, you just might want to check it out.

So what is Google social search?

It is an alternative search option at Google that displays only results from social media channels - blogs, forums, social networks etc. The good thing about it is that you can choose also what kind of channels you would like to search from and additionally you can define the time period you want the search results appear from. So you can define your search as you want it and get results that you need.

Also check out this video by Google on how the search really works:

Why is it good for you?

1) People talk about different things out there all the time, but it doesn't necessarily appear on Google search. If you're looking for information about some product, for example, then besides just Googling it you can also search it via social search and see if someone has mentioned the product in a blog post or a forum. For example, check out what you can find out about Moogo when searching for blog posts within the past one week with the keyword "Moogo".

2) If you have a company your own, you probably want to know what people are talking about your product. This is the best way to find real time conversations on Internet. And it makes it really easy for you to join the conversation when needed.

3) Want to know more about a person you're about to meet at a job interview, partner meeting or anywhere else? Social search gives a pretty good idea about any person - what (s)he's talking about and who (s)he's communicating with. Also search your own name and see what people will find out about you - might be good to know!

Where can you find it from?

For users who search in English it should be available with every normal Google search. Just expand the link "Show Options" under the Google search tab and you can choose different social media channels and a time period for your social search. That's how simple it is.

If for some reason you can't fint it from your Google search engine then check out Google Experiment pages and you will find it from there. Or, well... just Google it.

There have been several other social search option on the web, so why is Google social search any better?

Well, Google social search is where you already are - with your friend Google.  As already said before, it's a great addition to the search engine service that you can use in matter of seconds. So why not to try it out?

Have you used Google social search? How do you use it? Let us know in the comments!

Connect and Collect: Two Rules to Win Customer Loyalty.

Tuesday 2/2/10 time 10:51 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

It is not uncommon for a business to spend a lot of money and energy towards attracting new customers. If your company is one of them, consider the following two quotes:

- "Businesses spend five times as much for new customers than they do on their present customers, yet a regular customer is worth 10 times the cost of acquiring a new customer." (The Loyalty Coach)

- "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000." (Pete Blackshaw)

Even if these numbers are only partly true (after all, I have found them on the net), they both convey a very convincing message: it is important to keep your current customers. Although there are a million different ways to do this (Allan Katz, the man behind the Loyalty Coach, shares fives secrets with you, and he does not ask one in return!),  the most important thing is to connect with your customers.

With connect, I do not necessarily mean to jump on the social media bandwagon. It is more  effective to start with the basics. Paul Spiegelman at Entrepreneur mentions four rules to remember, but I think they could even be boiled down to two rules, which are easy to implement and highly effective.

1. Listen and Respond
Communication is the key to a successful relationship. Really listen to what your customer has to say, and respond as good as you can. Customers are more forgiving of errors, as long as you are honest about it, and communicate clearly what went wrong and how you will prevent these errors from happening in the future. For example, a late delivery might not necessarily become a problem, as long as you inform the customer on time.

2. Be Proactive.
You should not only listen and respond, but you should start the conversation. Make your customers talk to you. You will learn a tremendous amount about your customers need, that no marketing company could ever tell you. If you have a website at Moogo, chances are that we have send you a personal e-mail, to inform how Moogo is working out for you. We engage in active communication with customers, to make sure that they will get everything they need out of our product. We give them tips on how to improve their websites, and how to get the most out of the features they have paid for.

To provide our users with the best results out of their website, we have tried to translate the above knowledge into our product. For example, if you order the Moogo Business package, you will get Advanced Forms, which allows you to run surveys with your website visitors. Darren Rowse at Problogger.net can explain you why he thinks running surveys with your readers rocks. Business users will also get the mailinglist option, which is perfect to contact a large amount of customers at the same time.

Feel free to comment on this blogpost! We will "listen and respond!"

HOW TO: Market Your Blog

Friday 1/29/10 - Heikki @Moogo

Many bloggers seem to have taken a quote – if you build it, they will come – from a late 80's Kevin Costner flick far too literally. Unfortunately, this mentality isn't applicable towards about 99% of the blogosphere. What we modern day scribes write about is up to us of course. Some splash their e-ink to air their own opinions, some write about what they're passionate about and some write as a job or about their business. Their themes are not necessarily connected, but what binds us all together is the following question: how do you get people to your blog and keep them coming back?

The very essence of every blog revolves around why. Why would people read your blog? This is the question you need to find an answer to first. Other questions you might want to ask yourself are for example: we all think we have interesting things to say but is it actually relevant to other people? Do you have opinionated views or insight on a certain topic? Are you trying to get a message across? If you can find a yes answer to the any one of these questions, you're off to a good start.

Now that we have established a reason to have a blog, we can take at a few pointers how one can tweak a blog to reach the major league.

What's in a name?

If you're using any of the great free blogging tools that are out there – typepad, blogger, blogspot to name a few – you options in terms of your URL are limited to yourusername.blogspot.com or www.blogger.com/username. This is why it might be beneficial to invest in a domain name. It certainly takes your blog's professionalism up a notch, gives it more recall value and the name should be relevant to the type of blog you’re producing.

Once you’ve chosen the domain name, make sure that the design of the blog displays it and mirrors the 'feel' of the name. Branding is all important.

Content is king

This can't be emphasized enough, as this is the bread and butter of every blog.

Make sure that you keep your posts consist of roughly similar themes and that they are published in regular intervals. Reader's tend not to like sporadic posts here and there. Don't venture into a great variety of topics. If you do, you might want to consider starting a separate blog for different subject matter. I have to add, that there's no harm in putting personal posts. In fact it may benefit you as your readers get to know the real “you”.

Keeping your content relevant will help provide your readers with an understanding what to expect from the blog .With content that they know and find interesting will keep them coming back.

Spell(ing) bound

This is related to content, but I wanted to put this down as its own entry.

A big downfall for blogs is that the author doesn't bother to spell check them. Or if they do, it's a “yes to all” policy and words that are completely wrong are entered. Nobody's perfect, but grammatically poor blogs are difficult to read and 99% of the time the reader will not return. Attention to grammatical detail is of course important for the blog's professionalism as well.

Social networking

Sounds sort of a no-brainer for us dwellers of the web 2.0 world, but this is something many bloggers don't utilize as much as it should.

Make sure you use the social networks and take advantage of the sites that are most advantageous to you. Create a Facebook fanpage, develop a fan base on Twitter (don't forget to retweet it as well) and promote your blog on these channels.

Take care of your readership

If people are taking the time to comment on your blog, thank them publicly or privately to encourage more of the same behavior. Answering comments will also build conversation around the article and might give you not only new content to add, but also new ideas for posts. Answering comments is also a way to get repeat traffic.

Also you might at times ask your audience what they would like to read about, if this doesn't come up in the comments, and it follows the same subject matter as your previous posts.

Put your blog out there

Writing the best blog is simply not enough, if people can't find it. You should submit your posts to the social news sites – like Digg, Stumbleupon, Sphinn for example – which will drive traffic to your site and increase SEO value by building links. Don't neglect directories either.

On a similar note, writing keyword-rich (author's note: you should of course use only relevant ones) posts and post titles will not only get you more traffic, but will also increase your Google ranking. Additionally, look for similar posts on the internet and leave a comment on their blog mentioning your post.

Add your blog link to your email signature, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profile pages. Finally add an RSS feed, so that readers automatically have access to your new posts.

PS. Apologies for the crummy Field of Dreams intro and baseball metaphors, but they were essential.

Moogo: Website of the Month competition is taking off!

Thursday 1/28/10 time 8:59 AM - Helena @Moogo

On February 1st, Moogo is going to kick off Moogo Website of the Month competition, which is a great opportunity for all of Moogo's users to strut their website to others and win great prizes.

There are many great Moogo websites out there and many Moogo users are continuously improving and developing their websites. The competition aims to recognize not only good design, but also usability, content, clever usage of different features and other opportunities that Moogo's website builder offers to its users.

The process continues through the whole month

As we want to give the opportunity for everyone to submit their website on time, the submission form will be opened from the 1st until the 18th February. Anyone can submit their Moogo website; no matter what package they have or what is the purpose of the website. You will also be able to see what kind of websites have been submitted already and rate and leave comments about the competitors.

On the 19th of February, Moogo team will gather together to select the three best websites out of all the submissions. The selection will be based on professional view on different elements of the websites – design, usability, content etc. When the decision is made, we'll feature all the three websites on our blog, where we also give the reasons as to why we picked the three.

Then the especially fun part starts. Everybody – including users and their friends – can vote for the best website, until the winner is announced from the top three on the 26th February. The winner will be featured on the Moogo blog.

Ah! So what are the prizes?

Naturally the winners get prizes for their effort. Additionally to getting valuable feedback to your website, here's what the winners will get.

The winner of Website of the Month:

• 12 month subscription of any Moogo package
• Free domain name
• Featured on Moogo blog as the winner
• Opportunity to win the Website of the Year 2010

2nd and 3rd position winners will get:

• 3 month subscription of any Moogo package
• Free domain name
• Featured on Moogo blog as the finalists

How can you get your website to win?

Here are few ideas on how you can increase your chances to win the competition:

• Look through your website and make final improvements. You can also ask a friend to give you a second opion on how easy it is to use, what he/she thinks of the design and other elements of your website.
• If you need more help, check out tips on Moogo blog. We have written many blog posts about how to improve certain parts of your website and how to get the most out of your Moogo features.
• Use Moogo's Facebook fan page to promote your website and ask feedback from others for making more improvements.

Are you up to the challenge? Make your website seen and known - check out moogo.com on the 1st of February and submit your website for the competition!

Google Local Explained: Free Advertising for Small Businesses

Monday 1/25/10 time 10:05 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

With Google dumping so many innovations on the market which sometimes only seem to interest the geekiest of the geekiest, it might be hard for a small business owner to filter out what is useful for them.

Let me draw your attention to Google Local. This is a fairly new service by Google that allows you to add information to the way you show up in Google Maps. Google Maps is a mapping service that can be used for getting directions from point A to point B, but more importantly for business users, potential customers use it to find services in their neighbourhood. An example: you live in Little Rock, Arkansas, and you need to buy food for your cute little jack russel. You go to maps.google.com and you type in:
"Pet store, little rock, Arkansas". You will then get the result show in the picture below:

Under A, the first suggestion by Google, you can see the company called "Premium Pet Products". When you click on the link, a balloon pops up with some more information, such as the website.

 

When you click on more info in the balloon, you get even more information about Premium Pet Products  including business hours and reviews! Everything a potential customer would like to know: address, opening hours, and reviews from other customers, all in one place.

 

Wouldn't it be great if your business would have a presence like that in Google Maps? That is where Google Local comes in: it allows you to add this information yourself. Provide your potential customers with the right contact information, let them know the latest promotions you are having, and show your opening hours. And you know what? This service is free!

So why should I do this for my business?

First of all, it is free. It will only cost you a little bit of time, about as much time as you spent getting your Moogo site online. So why not?

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly: more and more people use the local search service, already far more people than have ever used the traditional methods, such as Yellow Pages. Add to that also more and more people have local search on their phone, and actively use this to find businesses in their area, so your business needs to be present here.

Thirdly, as an exchange for providing Google with correct data of your company, Google gives you insight in the way people find your location. You will get so much free data through their dashboard. This data you can easily use to improve your business. For example, you will get insight in what keywords users searched for when they found your location. For example, if you are a restaurant, and people found your site when searching for a particular dish you have, you can advertise that more clearly, to attract more visitors. Also you will get access to the directions that were requested, giving you information where in town your customers come from!

Oh, by the way, did I mention it is FREE?

How do I get my business on there?

Go to www.google.com/lbc and follow the steps. You will have it set up in minutes.
For more information, see Google's own Local Business Center User Guide.

Still not convinced? Then watch Google's video:

 

 

Monetizing Social Media

Friday 1/22/10 - Heikki @Moogo

Social media is and continues to be the hot potato of the Internet and its getting passed around more than a bowl of popcorn at an Oscar movie screening. And one topic that continues to stir up conversation frequently is how to monetize it. Naturally most – if not all – are still at a point where they're figuring what the best way is, but I wanted to explore and explain some options that are out there for private users and social networks as a whole.

Premium Accounts

This simple idea revolves around the idea of charging users a fee to use a site. Twitter, the micro-blogging media darling, has already begun to insert 3rd party applications in a space on the homepage. To increase the bounty in their collective war chests, it appears almost certain that Twitter, Facebook and other sites are going to introduce premium accounts.

This is an opportunity for them and others alike to upsell people on something that includes exclusive content, access, additional features etc. Users are of course used to getting things for free, which makes it difficult to convince them to pay for social networking. For example Facebook has already seen an upheaval from users towards paying in the form of a group.

All of this leaves us with the following: are individuals and businesses truly willing to pay for these accounts, and if so how much?

Ad Supported

This is the main way that social networks nyt try to generate income. The ads of course support the users in getting the service pro bono in exchange to seeing a couple of ads. The main hook for the advertisers is that they can target users based on various demographic info and interests.

The drawback here are the click-through rates that have especially plagued Facebook. This actually makes sense, because people go on social networks for specific purposes—they want to check out their friends profiles, pictures, videos, etc. But recent stats show that trend seems to be reversing and that they are even flourishing. And Forrester is reporting that social media ad spend will hit $3,1 billion by 2014. So I wouldn't necessarily write off ads as archaic just yet.

Data Mining

Such a negative concept to most, but this model involves collecting any kind of data about a group of people and selling it to an advertiser. Let's say Adidas wants to learn more about what kind of music and movies young adults from 19-25 like, they would be able to purchase data from a social network that tells them what they need to know. This data of course aides advertisers to target consumers more personally.

This technique might be a bit sketchy, because in which way the collected data is used can raise questions regarding privacy, legality, and ethics. Full disclosure is crucial would be crucial here, but that also applies to any social media efforts. Regardless of this, this can generate income. And if you can't stand the heat it might generate, stay out of the kitchen.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is essentially selling any outside party’s goods/services and getting a commission or fee for each sale that is made. Instead of utilizing Google's AdWords, why not offer a relevant product or service to your users? According to Nielsen, social shopping communities are popular for Christmas shopping. eMarketer chimes in and states that 27% of will look to social sites for gift ideas, and an additional 45% use social networks to research items and compare prices.

I would foresee this being especially useful on niche sites, but of course there's no guarantee that users convert to buyers. And of course this requires active participation from the affiliate, but the rewards can be quite substantial, and is tied to the amount of work put in.

Tweets For Hire

As the popularity of Twitter continues to soar, people are also realizing its money making potential. While Twitter itself is facing issues in how to monetize their own service, users have begun advertising brands in their tweet feed. It works like this: you tweet away without a care in the world, but say for example that every tenth tweet will be a piece of advertising.

Essentially this might turn into some serious self-prostitution, and people might not have any emotional or personal ties to the brand they advertise. Naturally if those elements exist already, people will tweet and at the same time advertise their favorite brands for free. This way companies would have some control over how frequently their ads go out, but you might also start alienating yourself from your followers if your ads start to rub them the wrong way.

Be aware of the murderer!

Thursday 1/21/10 time 10:27 AM - Helena @Moogo

Lately everyone is extra careful at the office, being afraid of getting murdered by a brutal, yet mysterious killer. Wonder what's happening? Moogo's murder game is happening!

So... what's really happening?!

Every person at the office has got a secret note that defines his/her target person and a tool to murder the person with. Murder is completed when the murderer hands over the item mentioned to the target and the target accepts the item. The winner is going to be the last person standing, however prizes will be also given to the person who made the first murder and the person completing most of the murders.

So every person being a murderer and being afraid of being murdered at the same time, you can imagine the sneakyness and carefulness that has taken over the office. Nobody accepts nothing from anyone at the office, whereas everybody has started talking to each other more than ever before, always suspecting "Is this the person wanting to murder me?".

Murder score

Overall there have been 6 people murdered within 3 days, therefore there's still 12 people to go. The 6 murders have been completed by 4 people, so we clearly have some more active people here.

Here's the breakdown:

- Our operational manager Kimmo has had already 2 victims - tech girl Linda and our CTO Antti. Weapons: computer mouse and business card.

- Our CEO Mikko made 2 very quick moves against Niklas (from the customer support) and Esa (our server guy). Weapons: newspaper and gloves.

- Anton from our customer support planned a clever murder during our Moogo evening and killed Heikki, one of our dear community managers. Weapon: plate.

- Lauri, one of our marketing guys, opened his score by murdering Marko from our customer service. Weapon: tape.

As you can see, there are many guys down from the customer support team. But don't worry, they are still there for you to help you in anything you need support with!

Who will be the next victim? Who will be the cleverest murderer of us all? We'll give all the updates on our Twitter account (twitter.com/moogo) and on this blog.

 

Found a suspicious Moogo website? Report it!

Tuesday 1/19/10 time 10:21 AM - Helena @Moogo

As there are tens of websites created every day with Moogo, there is a lot of variety in the websites - how they look like, what they communicate and who they are created by. Moogo is not responsible for any content that has been published on websites created with Moogo website builder. However, we want to keep the Internet clean and ensure that Moogo website builder is used for what it's supposed to be used for - creating professional websites.

Therefore we have created a form where you can report websites that have a suspicious content on it, as well as we actively search for potentially fraud and scam websites ourselves.



So how would you recognize a fraud website built with Moogo?

1. Your credit card information is asked on a simple form.

That's the first and biggest warning sign. When you fill in the form and give your credit card details there, the website owners will simply get the information and use it for their own good.

When it's obviously a Moogo website then also remember that Moogo supports only payments through PayPal (also credit card through PayPal).

2. It just doesn't make sense

When you live in the US then why would you buy a dog from Cameroon? If you're wondering if the content of the website is real then Google some part of the text of the website or the URL of the website. If anyone has already found out that they're fraud, you will find it out instantly.

3. There are names of well known companies and/or people used

When a big international company offers something on a separate website, you have a reason to be suspicious. Just use your friend Google to search for the company and if the website belongs to them or not. Most likely it doesn't.

If you have never seen any of those websites, you might wonder if it really is worth reporting them. Here are, however, 3 good reasons why you should do it:

1. Fraud websites steal money from people. That's as simple as it is. If you're not very careful when purchasing on Internet, you can be the next victim.

2. Many scam websites also use identity of another already existing company. It can be your or your friend's company's name used out there right now!

3. Some fraud websites also use identity of another person, which can as well be you. So ber careful!

If you see any fraud or scam website then make sure to report it via Report Abuse form on moogo.com. We take all the reports seriously and give our best to ensure that there are only quality websites created with Moogo.

 

HOW TO: Get Indexed

Monday 1/18/10 - Heikki @Moogo

Moogo is a service. And like every service, it has users. And these users are naturally entitled to customer service – and customer service has to be both reactive and proactive.

Moogo provides its valued users a number of different platforms – Email, Forum, FAQ – how to resolve issues they are experiencing. Regardless of the fact that we try to provide an answer to every anticipated or reoccurring question, there are always new and consistent issues that our users face to which they can't find an answer to on our website. One such issue is how can you get your Moogo website to appear in search engine results?

In one of our first blog posts we explained what makes search engines tick, and in the following post briefly mentioned how you can utilize Moogo's tools to improve your visibility. But since this question pops up quite frequently, we decided to dedicate a blog post to provide a definitive answer.

Let's start off with some statistics. According to Berkeley University, over 7 million web sites are being added daily. To top that off, as of May 2009, over 25 billion pages (yes, that's 25 billion) pages have been indexed and there were 109,5 million websites in operation. Now that you know how vast the Internet is, maybe it's not so hard to fathom why your site gets held up and lost amidst all the other sites. All of this aside, getting statistics on how big the web is easy, but finding information on how long does it take for a search engine to crawl your site and index it is a completely different story.

To be honest, of course the indexing speed is dependent on the search engine in question as they use different algorithms. But of course we should only measure the biggest of them all: Google. According to various sources of information, Google can take anything from one week up to 3 months to index your site. And if you really want to be annoyed by this sluggish indexing speed; apparently Google tends to index sites gradually instead of doing it in all at once. But don't fret, because Moogo offers you one extremely useful tool, which will help you in getting your site not only indexed faster, but also to rank higher.

When you log into your Moogo account and are in admin view, click on the 'content pages' link. Once you are there, click on any of the content pages you've made. Once content page management loads up for you, you should see an 'additional settings' tab there. Clicking on that will open a new sub-menu, which allows you to enter a description and descriptive keywords for your site and that specific content page. For example, if you have a website dedicated to the Watchmen (like I do – and yes, a shameless self-plug), a description for the site could be: this is a fansite dedicated to the most celebrated graphic novel of all-time – The Watchmen. And then the keywords I could have would be something along the line of: Alan Moore, Rorschach, graphic novel, DC Comics. The rule of thumb here is to provide an accurate description of your site so that visitors will find exactly what they are looking for on your site.

In addition to this, the speed at which Google will index all your internal pages will depend on a few additional different factors:

Links. If you get some very trusted and relevant backlinks (incoming links to a website or web page), and on top of that you also have a very efficient internal link structure, all your pages will get indexed fast. If on the other hand, you have very few backlinks and a poor link structure, it might take a while before you get to see all your pages indexed.

Manual submission. Keep in mind that using the manual URL submission to Google will have a small impact upon the speed and breadth of your indexation. In fact, some recommend that if you want to get a site indexed fast you shouldn't use this feature, and rather focus on getting some trusted backlinks to your site. This is always of course better as content is what sets your site apart from others.

Directories. Web directories specialize in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. A web directory should not be confused with a search engine as it does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. There are of course tons of directories on the web, and if you pick the most relevant according to your needs, your site will be indexed faster.

Forums, Blogs, Social Bookmarking Sites. If you are registered on any forum, you should of course promote your site on there by submitting content. The same applies if you are an active participant on any blogs, or perhaps have one for yourself. And you can also add your site to any of the popular social bookmarking sites to give your site even further exposure.

These are just some of the many, many available tools and techniques that you can use to make your web presence more visible and getting indexed not only faster, but for sure. If you wish to read more, just read this article on getting indexed quicker.

In love and foosball, anything is allowed.

Friday 1/15/10 time 9:23 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

Popular belief has it that people who work in the internet field, or the computer field in general, are not very good at sports. We are supposedly very bad at sports and worst of all, we don't like sports. This blog post will prove that, as very often, popular belief has it wrong!

For months we have been running an extensive and serious Foosball competition, one of the most underestimated and beautiful sports that this planet is rich. Every employee participated with his/her own team.

A famous person whose name I can't remember once said: "In love and foosball, anything is allowed." Never was this more true than during this competition. Friendships no longer meant anything. Ranks no longer meant anything. It was dog eat dog. Brother against brother. Sister against sister.

Today, there was The Final: Niklas (shown above here on the right) from Support  against Antti (left), our CEO. Five games. First one to win three would be the undisputed champion.  After two games Niklas was leading 2-0. Niklas could take the gold in the third provided he would stay focused. In the third game Antti was leading for a long time (an astonishing 35 seconds) but 30 seconds before the end Niklas got in the equalizer. And with only a few seconds left on the clock, he went in for the kill. 2-1. Poor Antti never stood a chance.

We salute you, Niklas, undisputed Champion of the Moogo Foosball League.
(Until next month's tournament, of course.)

 

HOW TO: Get Most Out of Your Advanced Forms

Thursday 1/14/10 time 11:09 AM - Helena @Moogo

Moogo's business users get an access to advanced forms that can be used for different kinds of questionnaires, surveys, inquires and many other purposes. Hereby we show you how you can use  the forms and get the most out of it.

Creating a form

You can use the feature for different purposes. It can be a customer survey or a questionnaire, but it can be also a way for your partners or customers to report or submit information relevant to you. Therefore be creative in using it and get the most out of it!

You can start a new form by opening the feature from the Site Management menu and clicking "New poll". Also if you have already existing forms, you can take them as a basis for making your new form. This way you don't have to start your form from the very beginning.

Before you start entering questions to your survey, you are asked to fill in basic information about the survey. Note that you have different options there for publishing and managing the survey, so choose the best options for yourself.


Now you've got to the main part of the survey - entering the questions/fields. On the right side you can see a panel called "Add field", which gives you all the different field options that you can enter to the form. All you have to do is click on the kind of field that you like.

After entering your questions/fields you can also delete fields and change the order of the fields by simply dragging them to the right place. From the Settings button that every field has you can set if the question is mandatory or not.


Some tips for creating a survey:

 - Try to think from the perspective of your visitor and make the process of answering to the survey as simple as possible.
 - When you have a multiple-choice question, make sure that there are answer options for everyone
 - When the survey is very long, you might want to add page breaks to divide  the survey to different pages (you can add page breaks also from the "Add field" panel)

Getting the answers

When the survey is ready and on your website then it doesn't always mean that people rush to your website to fill it in. So why don't you send them an invitation?

You can invite people to fill in your survey by clicking to "E-mail invitations".

There you can send direct e-mail invitations to as many people as you want. Additionally you can see replies from the people that you have sent the invitation to. This not only helps you to get more people fill in your survey, but also helps you to track the replies in easier way.

Analysing the results

Imagine that you have got hundreds of answers to your survey. It's time to see what kind of answers you have got!

You can check the answers by clicking on "Responses" on the left menu. Here you can check all the answers one by one, but as you probably don't want to go through all the hundreds of responses, you might just want to make a summary of the survey. So just go to "Summary", choose the options there and you will get an overview of all the responses.

If you want to make nice graphs and gather the information for statistics, you can also export the information by clicking "Export responses to Excel". In a second the system will open your Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Spreadsheet together with all the information that your visitors have given to you.


We have seen very many nice surveys and forms created with Moogo. If you have a great example, don't hesitate to add a link to it in the comments!

 

HOW TO: Add Text and Images over the Top Bar Image.

Wednesday 1/13/10 time 6:55 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

In a previous blog post we have shown how to add your own image to the top bar (header). But as we are constantly improving and updating the Moogo service, our esteemed and brilliant colleagues (read: geeks) at the tech department have developed another feature to customize the top bar. Instead of replacing the entire image, you can now also add an image over the top bar image, and add text on top of the top bar image.

It works as follows:

1. After having logged in to your Moogo website, click on the button on the upper left corner of the header. There is a new button there, a green plus sign. Click on it.

2. A window will show up where you can add the image and/or add a text.

 

3. If you want ADD AN IMAGE, click on Select Image. This will bring up the file browser.

3. In the file browser, choose the folder where you want to save your image, and click on "Browse" to find the image file of your company logo from your own computer. When you found it, double-click or click open. Back in the file browser, click send. It will now be uploaded to the folder of your choice.

4. When it appears in the folder, click on the behind the file. Now you have put your image file on the top bar.

5. If you want to ADD TEXT, just type in the text of your choice in the text field under "Text showed up on top-bar". You will see that it will appear on the top bar while you are typing. This way you can see exactly how it will look!

Below the text field, you can change the text size and the color. Just click "Save" and you are done! 

Tip: make sure that the text does not vanish in the background color, so choose a good contrast between the text and the background, while making sure that the colors fit together.

The Long Tail of SEO

Tuesday 1/12/10 - Heikki @Moogo

The long tail: an oft-forgotten part of the search engine optimization process. Why? Because it's occasionally difficult to get excited about ranking for a phrase which brings in 3 people per month. However, long tail SEO can bring in up to 90% of your traffic, and it's easier than beating the established players in a bidding war for the big phrases. This highly focused and targeted approach is the reason why long tail is important. But what is this oh-so-important long tail SEO then exactly?

The theoretical framework behind long tail is, that our combined culture and economy are continuously shifting from a focus on relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve towards an infinite number of niches in the tail. As production and distribution costs fall, especially online, there is now less need pigeonhole products and services into one-size-fits-all containers.

Some of today's successful online businesses leverage the long tail to reach customers and to satisfy the demand for products not found in physical stores. Since companies have found niches for their products, how can the long tail approach be applied to a company's SEO strategy?

In the past, your SEO efforts might have thwarted because of optimizing for such broad and general terms as 'travel' or 'vacation'. It is nothing next to impossible to reach the top of the heap with such generic terms. As consumers explore the deep waters of the Internet for answers, the true SEO success comes from driving customers directly to the actual content they are looking for. For example, if you're a travel company in Costa Rica, don't put resources to waste by optimizing for such search terms as 'travel'. Instead, run SEO programs for such terms like 'Costa Rican ecotourism', 'Costa Rica rainforest tour' and so on. Targeting much easier to obtain keywords on a mass scale means there is a good chance your going to catch a few right on the nose and get straight in at that number one or number two slot, giving you high returns.

Without a doubt there's a long tail market for content created by any type of organization, corporation, or nonprofit to reach buyers. The best approach is to create separate SEO practices for dozens, hundreds and even tens of thousands of specific search terms that people are searching for. This can mean creating focused pages for specialized search terms to boost-up your organic rankings. For example, one sure-fire way to get top rankings for a long tail phrase is to apply the regular rules on on-page SEO: utilize the phrase in the title, URL, heading, meta description and first paragraph of body content. Just remember, creating a whole page for every long tail term is not usually practical – you end up with hundreds of pages effectively saying the same thing, which is just useless duplicate content. A better approach to long tail search is to add your long tail phrases onto pages that are already ranking for related terms. Or alternatively, if you have some cash to throw around, you can purchase the keywords through Google's Adwords for a few cents per click.

One has to realize that long tail SEO is not only about gaining the initial conversion, it's about increased visibility to a targeted audience. Try to determine which terms you already rank for, which terms have pages of content ready to optimize, and then which terms you need to create content for. After you've done this, make the appropriate changes, and cast your thousands and thousands of hooks in the deep murky waters to expose the targeted bait at precisely the right time to catch a variety of fish. You won't catch a fish with every hook, but with so many baits, you will certainly reel in lots of the prized fish you value the most.

3 Ways How Online Website Builders Have Changed the Web

Monday 1/11/10 time 10:27 AM - Helena @Moogo

While thousands of people are creating their websites with an online website builder every day, it is difficult not to notice the influence that it has had to the web in general. Here are the top 3 ways how website builders have changed the Internet.

1. Self expression beyond blogs and social networking sites

It is easy to start your own blog to express your views on issues relevant to you. It is also easy to upload your photos or videos on Internet and share them with your friends. And it is extremely easy to let everybody else know what is on your mind thanks to hundreds of social networking sites.

A website, however, can be your own corner where you can do almost anything you want. You can express your views by writing a blog, upload photos and videos, connect the website to your Facebook or Twitter account and do many things more. Whereas more and more people decide to have a website for introducing themselves publicly to the world, it is yet another and powerful tool to leave an image of yourself that you can control.

2. Starting your own business

If your company is not on Internet, it doesn't exist. At least that's the common perception of the game. While dealing with the whole hassle of starting your own company, setting up a website is yet another thing to take care of.

Website builders have changed the web full of enthusiastic entrepreneurs - trying out their first (or perhaps already 10th) business idea, getting their voice out there in an easier way and selling their products with smaller investment than ever before.

As starting an online company is so much easier than it used to be then it naturally supports entrepreneurs to try out their new business ideas - costs are very low, so it is quite safe to experiment. Whether it is a great business idea that you put your whole time into or a side business on the Internet - website builders have made it easier to start any kind of a company.

3. Larger participation

Do you still remember the time when the websites were created by "the experts"? These experts are still there and very much needed, but additionally to the tech savvy guys and gals out there you can now find lots of people without any technical knowledge active on the web. And they are not only updating their statuses on social networking sites, but making awesome looking websites!

This is a shift that has activated more people on the web than ever before - starting with a small child making a website for a school project and ending with an old guy who wants to display his stamp collection on the Internet.

 

Online website builders that are easy to use and have low costs are still gathering popularity among people all around the world. If you have any other thoughts on how online website builders have changed the way we communicate on the Internet, please do let us know in the comments!

 

E-store: Paypal explained

Friday 1/8/10 time 10:09 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

Some of you might know that we have recently added our E-store feature to the Business package. You can use it to display, promote and sell your products and services. It allows you to manage virtually every component: product images, discounts, categories, etc. It is an essential tool for any business who want to sell their product online.

When selling things on the World Wide Web, World Wide might mean that your customer is in a different country than your business. In that case it is unlikely that your customer is using the same bank as you, or even has a bank account in the same country as your business. That is why Moogo has chosen PayPal as the method of payment for the store.

Paypal is the number one payment service on the internet. It allows payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet and serves as an electronic alternative for traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. It has many times been proven and awarded as the safest way to pay on the internet.

If you set up your Moogo E-store and want to implement the PayPal option, you need to create an account with PayPal. Check out this great tutorial video on how to sign up for a new PayPal account.

Once you get your account set up, you will have a PayPal ID. This is the e-mail address with which you have signed in into PayPal. When setting up the payment option in the Moogo E-store, you will need to inform the Moogo Support team of your PayPal ID. (Just your PayPal ID / e-mail, not your password!) The Support will then connect your E-store to your PayPal account and all payments done for your E-store will then automatically be deposited on your PayPal account.

Your customers can then pay with all major creditcards, which is important as more than 80% of all internet buyers prefer credit cards. Additionally PayPal also allows a lot of countries to pay with their local net banking services. PayPal takes care of all the rest: security, handling, and of course transferring the income on your PayPal account back to your business account.

Of course this service is not completely free of charge. PayPal charges a small fee on all transactions, depending on various things: the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type.

For more information on PayPal, check out their website and their Help Center.

If this has interested you in our Business Package, then get started now or read more here.

Budgeting Social Media

Thursday 1/7/10 - Heikki @Moogo

“The money never sleeps”

Aphrase once proclaimed by the fictional movie character Gordon “greed-is-good” Gekko in the Oscar-winning flick “Wall Street”. I have no idea, if our federal reserve notes do dream of greener pastures, but according to a recent survey by Econsultancy, a whopping 86% of companies are going to beef up their social media budget this year. To top it off, a further 13% are planning to keep the same level of budget. The almighty dollar is definitely not catching any shut-eye.

Since the buck is on the go, two questions pop into mind: what is the money spent on and why?

According to eMarketer, the most (60%) of the social media dollars will be spent on staff payroll for activities such as blogging, content development and monitoring social media channels. Another two-fifths will be spent on outside help from agencies, consultancies, and service providers.

Typically, we see internal budget increases happen when companies decide to get serious about a long-term investment. This spending-spree is a clear indication that marketers are becoming more comfortable and more experienced in using social media and are drifting away from the trial phase of their marketing efforts towards a strategic use of the channel. In the the strategic phase, companies are significantly more likely than those in earlier phases of the process to measure their success across all objectives.

Defining the objectives – e.g. increase in website traffic, sales revenue, lead generation etc. – for a social marketing initiative is only half the battle. The other half is aligning those objectives with corresponding metrics: unique visitors, page views, time spent on site etc. This alignment is important because it enables an organization to measure its progress in achieving the objectives and proving ROI.

For most, this means hiring social media pros that oversee, manage, and champion social media efforts internally. These internal social media evangelists are crucial, because they not only challenge us to bring ideas to the table, but they bring insight and knowledge regarding company business objectives. Like always, these efforts need to be integrated with the organization. It's all about two-way communication between a company and its constituents, and everyone can have a role to play.

Consider hiring at least one in-house social media expert, and then an agency that not only brings ideas that bubble up to the business objectives, but also to implement the concepts. Because there are nuances within social media and many different skill sets required to implement successful social media campaigns, you will save time and budget by hiring an agency and expert(s).

Of course, if you are planning on expanding your social media efforts, why stop here?

There's still frequent debate over what department social media falls under. Some say marketing, some say PR, others say advertising. In fact, social media falls under all of them and countless other departments as well – which can be interpreted that social media doesn't need to be hived off in a special unit due to its integration. Additionally, there's even further debate over figuring out who pays for social media, who takes on the risks, who gets the rewards.

Instead of trying to jumble different departments around in order to find resources (the biggest barrier to better social media engagement for companies), dedication and time for social media, why not create a central hub in the form a separate social media department? This is something I personally have not seen done yet.

There are obvious strategic advantages in consolidating social media skills within a central function:

• The customer support team. Social media can help them get closer to their constituency and interact in ways previously not possible

• Act as expert facilitators. Although they may not run every campaign, they can still have valuable input (for instance advising on etiquette on a network like Twitter)

• A centralized social media team ensures that best practice is isolated and transmitted.

When allocating a budget for social media, don't necessarily put your eggs in one basket. Define your needs and expectations. What are your primary objectives and campaign time Which techniques are you using already and how are they working? Do you have internal resources? Answering these questions should give you an idea as to what your budget should be. Remember: all social media budgets should be formulated on a per company basis, so don't believe the hype and settle on set-pricing.

The One

Tuesday 1/5/10 time 10:23 AM - Helena @Moogo

You need a website? You need it fast and without any extra hassle? You're at the right place! It's very easy to get started with Moogo and there are several packages that you can choose from. If you, however, are not sure of which package is the right one for you, we hereby bring you couple of suggestions for making your decision-making process easier.

The things you should think about...

What kind of features do I need?

The packages are created based on the features that would suit different users the best. So you might want to check out all the features before making your final decision.

For example, the Business package includes features that an online business would need, one of the most important one of them being an e-store feature.

If you need a personal website for keeping your blog, telling about some of your hobbies or just displaying your online profile then Personal package contains all the necessary featrues for that.

Organization package, however, includes some of the very important features for sports teams, different kinds of associations and group.

How much space do I need?

The amount of space included in the packages is different. So if you are, for example, a photographer and want to have a website for displaying your work, you might want to consider the size and amount of your photos.

In general, however, the space given in every package is sufficient for the specific target groups.

Do you need a domain name?

If you definitely need a domain name then you should remember that you get free domain name when ordering Organization or Business package for 12 months. Nice deal, huh? So don't worry about getting your own web address again!

With Personal package you still have the opportunity to purchase a domain name or transfer your website to already existing domain name.

 

...and things that you don't have  to think about

Will my website look good?

Your website will look good and professional no matter which package you choose, because the design templates and layouts are the same for everyone. You can choose your preliminary design and layout when starting with your website and can change it any time in the future.

Will I get sufficient support?

Our guys at the help desk are always ready to help you with any questions that you might have about Moogo, no matter which package you decide to purchase. So you will get equally fast response when you get a Personal, Organization or Business package.

Also our Support pages are always there to help you in case you want to dig out an answer to your problem yourself.

Can I customize it enough?

Most of the businesses and also many private users customize their website for matching it with their corporate identity or personality. You can do it with all the Moogo packages! For example, you can change the top bar of your website and place your logo there, as well as change the background color to match the colors of your logo.

 

Do you know now which package is the one for you? If you don't or if you have suggestions for making changes in the features of the packages, don't hesitate to contact us at moogo@moogo.com or just leave comments to the blog post.

 

5 New Year's (Re)Solutions for your Business

Monday 1/4/10 time 11:02 AM - Sjoerd @Moogo

Sorry, no more champagne...the season to be merry is over, time to get back to business. But not before we have given you some New Year's Resolutions to improve your online business!

1. Take Down The Christmas Decorations
As mentioned before one of the most important keys to a successful website is content that is up to date. So don't forget to take down the Christmas decorations, Christmas specials and all other irrelevant and outdated content. Get rid of pages that you no longer use, promotions and offers that are no longer valid, and double-check if all your contact information is still correct.

2. Gain Online Weight
Take some time to find out (or re-evaluate) where your potential customers are hanging out online.
Which websites do they visit? Which communities are they part of? Are they using Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Gain online weight by creating online presences in those places where your customers hang out. Make a Facebook business/fan page for your product/business/organization. Maybe your company can even use Twitter? There are bakeries that use Twitter, so there might be something in there for your business or organization as well.

3. Quit Smoking
If you didn't know it already you can no longer blow smoke in the eyes of your customers. In most cases, your online customers know exactly what they want, and a price and quality comparison is only a mouse-click away. Be honest, deliver a good quality product, don't overcharge and always stay nice.

4. Keep in touch with your friends
After you have located your customer with resolution #2, and then have pleasantly sold them something with resolution #3, it is wise to stay in touch with them. According to The Loyalty Coach “businesses spend five times as much for new customers than they do on their present customers, yet a regular customer is worth 10 times the cost of acquiring a new customer!“ Read our previous blog on how you can use Moogo to make your communication work.

5. Spend More Time with the Family
A lot of our Moogo users are people who run a family or home-based business. If you are one of them and you have worked your proverbial behind off during the holiday season, now might be the moment to spend some more quality time with the family. Read this insightful article on familybusinessbattleground.com.

Alright, we all hope you had a great year and we at Moogo will do whatever we can to make 2010 an even better year for our all users!

Thank you for using Moogo and we are looking forward to working with you again this year!

Moogo office in 2009

Thursday 12/31/09 time 7:48 AM - Helena @Moogo

As our office is naturally the central point for all of us to make Moogo happen and have fun along the way, we have put together a collection of some of the nicest, funniest and perhaps also a bit ackward memories from the office.

Recruitment is where it all starts

As already mentioned, we have grown in number of employees quite a lot this year. At some point there was a new person starting his/her work every week! Also, as the average age in the company is extremely low then for many of us it has been (one of the) first real work places.

Many people in the office mentioned that their first experience with the office was very memorable because of the recruitment process and the first day at work. As in the first half of the year the foosball table was the central part of our office entertainment, then most of the potential employees were asked about their foosball playing skills.

On the first day at work for the Moogo community managers team, we were expanding our office and got started by covering a wall with blue paint. Now the blue  wall is the first thing you would see when stepping in to our office.

 

Office entertainment

It happens once in a while that somebody in the Moogo office comes up with a new cool thing to do or some new things to purchase for the office. Our recent entertainment centre is pool table that has got its place next  to the foosball table. Additionally one room is being decorated to be an innovation room - a place where people can brainstorm and have relaxed atmosphere for coming up with new great ideas.

Recently one of the employees reinvented Text TV and now our TVs around the office show all the important information (including foosball tournament scores) all day long. Ahhh... isn't it good to get back to the roots?

We do lots of hard work here...

...but we also have lots of fun! Having a trip together to visit our partners in another country, Christmas party on a tram, after-parties in the office - it's all part of Moogo people's lives. Also our CEO Mikko misses us so much when he travels somewhere that sends us lovely postcards (unfortunately we can't publish them here, as contain unappropriate visual material for children).

And sometimes we just use our creativity for coming up with all sorts of... weird things. There are never too many markers and glass walls in this office!

Getting famous visitors

Once in a while we want to look very good and important, as we get some popular visitors. The famous story is about the local Big Brother girls coming to the office. As we were helping them to make their own website, the office crew held a fossball tournament to decide who can be the one explaining the process. Conveniently, our CEO Mikko won the tournament.

And while having all those funny memories from the office, we've been happy to be able to bring Moogo's service to everybody out there. We hope you have had as much fun with Moogo as we have.

Thank you for a great year and happy new year!