Schwartz recently announced a partnership with HubSpot, an inbound marketing software vendor based in Cambridge, Mass. Even ahead of the partnership, many of Schwartz's clients used HubSpot to measure the effectiveness of their websites. HubSpot provides very valuable data, especially for companies that wish to increase traffic to their websites.
Schwartz teams are conducting regular HubSpot evaluations for many of our clients. Among the variety of data points HubSpot can provide, a few are especially important and have a direct impact on SEO. They are outlined below.
- Website Grade HubSpot has created a proprietary method to measure if a website is effective as a marketing instrument. The website grade places a given site in a percentile relative to all other sites on the web. A grade of 73, for example, means that of all the sites HubSpot has graded, the site in question is more effective from a marketing perspective than 73 percent of them.
- Traffic Rank This is a ranking of the amount of traffic to the website versus all other sites on the web. The ranking is provided by Alexa, an online service that measures and monitors website traffic.
- Inbound Links This is how many other pages on the web link to content contained on the evaluated website.
- Google Indexed Pages This is the number of pages within the evaluated website that Google can see.
For marketers who care about SEO, inbound links and Google indexed pages are significant, since they are used by the search engine to determine the authority of a given page and website (Translation: if those metrics improve, a company's ranking within Google improves).
Schwartz has been including these sorts of metrics in the ongoing tracking we perform for our clients. Our programs directly and significantly impact the number of inbound links (based on media relations) and the number of Google indexed pages (as a result of our content marketing programs, which include blog management).
If you attended Xconomy’s XSITE 2010, the second annual Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at Babson College and the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, you were in for a treat. This year’s theme, “Building the Next Economy,” brought together leading technologists, entrepreneurs, and investors from around New England—and beyond. It delivered on its promise for a full day of learning, stimulation, debate, networking, and inspiration.
Throughout the day, special Innovator Profile presentations highlighted the efforts of new and exciting companies in New England that will transform the future of healthcare, life sciences, and technology. XSITE 2010 examined the state of capital markets, explored the realities of the startup life cycle and the obstacles entrepreneurs must overcome to succeed in frontier fields as diverse as wireless health services, new drug discovery, and smart energy technologies.
During the afternoon, attendees participated in breakout sessions on life sciences, energy/cleantech, health IT, and information technology, and heard firsthand how New England’s startups, large companies, and academic leaders are driving dynamic change. Finally, a dozen of the region’s most promising emerging firms in IT, life sciences, and energy showed their stuff at XSITE Xpo, a rapid-fire session with audience voting on which companies will be the most transformative.
Highlights ranged from Alkermes CEO Richard Pops to Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet and a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners, who, with skill and humor, likened the energy bubble to the advent of the Internet. Xconomy CEO Bob Buderi surprised even the event planners with his musical talents.
Heartland Robotics Founder Rod Brooks assured us all that robots won’t be taking the place of humans, but rather assisting us. John Chuang, founder and CEO of Litl, took a different view of customer service. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation, delivered an exciting keynote about entrepreneurial competition to accelerate innovation.
John Moore of the New Media Medicine at the MIT Media Lab, said, “The real solution is getting rid of fee-for-service and to move toward a patient-centric model that allows doctors to care for patients.”
In the smart energy breakout panel, Phil Adams, the president and chief operating officer of World Energy, said Americans need to “wake up,” and that “energy is a different animal” from software, in terms of how much work it takes to acquire customers.
And at the end of the day, a dozen of the region’s most promising emerging firms in IT, life sciences, and energy strutted their stuff at XSITE Xpo, a rapid-fire session where the audience voted on which companies will be the most transformative. The life sciences winner was medicine authentication company Sproxil.Marginize, a TechStars company that lets consumers see what people are saying about the websites they’re visiting, took the IT crown. And finally, the audience warmed up to Promethean Power Systems, a maker of solar-powered refrigerators, the winner of the cleantech/energy track.
You can continue to stay apprised of all things business and technology year-round through Xconomy’s in-depth, engaging journalism and networking events in key hubs: Boston,Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego.
I was standing outside the entrance to the main expo hall at Microsoft TechEd last Monday night when I noticed the board. Staffers at high tech PR companies typically pay close attention to any stimuli at tradeshows-- be it publications, billboards, box trucks, etc. For the most part, activities are standard.
Inserts into tradeshow bags. Decaled sports cars. Free t-shirts.
But what caught my eye on "the board" at TechEd was different. Part of the screen showed a continuous stream of tweets, all with the hashtag #TechEd. Not to lose the chance to help create visibility for my client at the show, ScriptLogic, I pulled out my iPhone and tweeted about the company's activity that night at their booth and included the hashtag. Sure enough it popped up on the big screen.
Suprisingly, Twitter is still a relatively new tool to Microsoft TechEd attendees. That said, all of the IT security clients we represent at Schwartz have some sort of Twitter strategy. For IT security, every second matters. When there is news of an IT security vulnerability or a breach, the industry wants to know yesterday and is hardwired to respond.
The same sense of urgency doesn't exist in other industries. But the board at TechEd showed how Twitter can have other equally impactful uses for community building. In essence, Microsoft TechEd is a yearly gathering for the Microsoft community. The enthusiasm on the tradeshow floor was visceral; these developers and IT opps are passionate about their work and about how Microsoft platforms can help them.
The ongoing Twitter feed on the board showed the attendees how powerful Twitter could be to communicate within a group. It was suddenly common to see attendees posting their observations, including the best evening receptions and I was proud to post ScriptLogic's win for Best of TechEd Award in one category, as well.
Even if a given company's strategy is merely to monitor and engage in a limited fashion, all technology companies need a strategy for Twitter. Across Schwartz's technology PR and cleantech PR programs, Twitter is a key channel to reach a variety of audiences. And our programs evaluate how that channel reaches strategic audiences and develop creative ideas for using the channel.
Earlier this week, the Publicity Club of New England recognized the best public relations and social media campaigns and tactics of the past year. The Bell Ringer judges were senior practitioners from Chicago and Boston.
Schwartz is proud that we have continued the tradition of being recognized with more Bell Ringer Awards for work we have done with our clients than any other PR Agency in New England.
Most gratifying to us this year is that we won 10 Gold Bells for our clients, and that Schwartz was recognized for having the two best campaigns of the year, winning both Gold and Silver Bells, for its work in the business-to-business, healthcare and high-tech public relations categories.
When asked by many, how do we continue to win so many awards, we believe it is based on two key elements:
1) As a strategic communications firm, we understand that we don’t succeed by ourselves. Schwartz works closely with our clients to make sure our communications, content and public relations activities help them realize their business objectives. It is this close relationship, senior level involvement and comprehensive approach - including social media, content marketing and inbound marketing services - that help our programs succeed.
2) We don’t expect our clients (or Bell Ringer judges) to measure our work based on the “thud factor”, or in social media Thud 2.0. Our work, and our award entries, are judged on how we helped public relations close the loop with sales, patient recruitment or other business objectives.
For the 2010 Bell Ringer Awards, this ranged from driving qualified leads from trade articles to creating enough demand to crash one client’s servers. It included driving hundreds of patient inquiries to cutting consumer misperceptions in half. It is based on helping drive hundreds of thousands in product sales to opening new channels with key prospects.
We are proud of the work of our employees and our clients. If you have any questions about how we can help your company, let us know.
Today is a big day in the for consumer technology professionals…Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Apple WWDC. It is mostly showing off upcoming technology and putting the stake in the ground for competitors to try to beat. While there were a few hiccups with his demos, the content more than made up for it.
This was one of his best keynotes in years.
I will leave the roundup to the news sites, but there are a few things that were said today that I thought might be interesting quick takes for our clients and consumer technology and mobile developers:
Apple claims that third-party developers have now generated $1 billion in revenue for themselves through the Apps store, even with Apple’s cut. There have been 5 billion total downloads.
Apple shared a Nielsen report that states the iPhone now has 28% market share for mobile devices. RIM is still in the lead with 35%, Windows 19%, Android 9%. I expect the number of software applications developed for the device to continue to explode.
There are more than 15,000 Apps submitted each week. Companies need to keep this in mind. If you build it, they may not come, for they won’t be able to find you. A successful iPhone app launch can be supported by a strong public relations, social media and inbound marketing campaign. By combining these three elements, consumer tech companies can help their apps stand out from the crowd.
Apple has added a gyroscope, which will make the iPhone and even better gaming platform and open up new opportunities for developers
Apple is introducing the iAd platform, which enables developers to embed banner ads and open a new revenue stream. I need more details to see how well received this will be. It is telling that Jobs states it is to help developers keep costs down, but then he only lists the largest brands as signing on to start and no mention of developer controls. He claims there will be $60m in iAds, which will make it a sizeable percentage of the mobile ad market.
It appears the new iPhone will be a significant upgrade and I am excited. Apple’s new Retina Display really caught my eye (no pun intended). At Schwartz we have worked with quote a few online photo and photo-based social networking companies and the crispness that is possible with Retina Display is outstanding. I can see companies in markets ranging from radiology to photo editing really digging in to this potential.
