newmediaMike

Daily SEO Tip - ALT Tags

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Some SEOs will lead you to believe that you should stuff keywords into your ALT tags. Unfortunately they are WRONG.

Don’t use your keyword phrase in ALT text.

Meme Meme Meme

Meme # 1

Must be the time of year, but last week’s meme was bloggers blogging about not blogging. The main theme everyone was touching on was, you don’t have to write every day. Write only when you have something to say. Some even defined “something” deeper as in “something meaningful to say”. So as some of my regular readers will know, I do like to jump on a bandwagon, which I thought I did this past weekend when I didn’t blog from Thursday night until Monday.

But I did Twitter from time to time from my cell phone, so I wasn’t totally offline. Speaking of twitter …

Meme #2

Twitter is always a meme. Whether it’s Twitter constantly being down, or how much money they raised, or who is following who, Twitter always has the blogosphere (are you ready for it) all aTwitter. (insert groan here). maybe it’s the lack of any substantial news that keeps twitter at the forefront, or is it just that it’s that time of the summer?

Well it is the dog days of August, although this year in Toronto, I think the Dog is a Portuguese Water Spaniel, what with all the rain we’ve had!

Meme #3

The weather. Whether it’s the cold, the amount of snow, the heat or the humidity or this year the RAIN, the weather is always a good meme.

What meme have you noticed lately?

ChickAdvisor

At last years ICE07 conference i sat in on the pitches being made for new media funding. One which stood out to myself and my tablemates was from a husband and wife team, Alex and Ali Debold. It had all the elements of success in the presentation and it just connected with the audience too. In the end it won.  then recently that annoying little feature on Facebook kept popping Ali’s name up as someone I might know. Yeah from sitting in a presentation she gave!I sent Ali a message telling her about this tenuous connection Facebook said we had, and then it dawned on me - I could do a blurb on the success so far of their site! Ali of course agreed.

ChickAdvisor is a social network platform for women 18-35 to share advice and reviews on their favorite products and local services.  It was launched in September 2006 by husband and wife duo Alex and Ali de Bold.  The idea for the site originated from the frustration Ali had when planning their spring 2005 wedding.  She couldn’t find any online reviews for hair salons and spas in Winnipeg where the wedding would take place.  A girl can’t trust just anyone with her hair on her wedding day!  She complained to Alex, who simply replied, “Well, why don’t we just build that kind of a service?” Given  his extensive background in online marketing and having launched his first company, ProfessorJones while still in his 3rd year at university, this wasn’t much of a stretch.  On September 2 2006, ChickAdvisor.com went live.

The company is entirely funded by the “Bank of Alex and Ali”, and is the first of its kind in Canada and arguably North America.  ChickAdvisor attracts 60,000 unique visitors/month and boasts over 5100 reviews from women across Canada and the United States.  Despite Alex working a full time job and Ali in school full time completing her degree at the time of the launch (she just graduated April 2008), ChickAdvisor has quickly gained traction within the marketplace and a healthy dose of media attention.  They have been featured in The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun, Slice.ca, CBC Newsworld’s Fortune Hunters, GlobalTV, Canadian Business (in stores and online now) and many others.

Much of that attention comes from their unique approach and ability to attract large national and international brands.  Having worked with the likes of Maybelline New York, CoverGirl, Herbal Essences, Kiehl’s, Travelzoo, Rogers Media and Alliance Atlantis certainly helps.  ChickAdvisor’s unique social platform allows them to create experiential marketing opportunities that hit on all levels: online (reviews), offline (local events) and videos.  Ali de Bold, aka online personality, “misschickie” hosts two video series on street fashion, lifestyle and entertaining topics from ChickAdvisor’s popular forums, ChickChat.  Slice.ca sponsored her first video series, “Where’d You Get That?”  and Rogers Media backed the second, “ChickChat TV“, which will be airing this September.  Zipcar will appear as one of the embedded sponsors in the series.

Their “Product Review Club” has successfully matched members with new products that companies are looking for opinions on or hoping to generate some extra buzz.  The success of this program has led to brands pitching their products to ChickAdvisor before they hit the shelves. This unique blend of branding, with information and entertainment is an offshoot of the branded infotainment concept I have spoken of before.

ChickAdvisor has enjoyed the same success offline. Their popular “Shop Crawl” where they take 60 of their members out for a night of shopping at a string of local boutiques followed by an after party, provides an opportunity for members to mingle while supporting local businesses and delving into loaded goodie bags from beauty and fashion brands who sponsor the evening.  Each shop crawl has completely sold out and they estimate that their next one (October 4th) will as well.

If that weren’t enough to keep them on their toes, they recently quietly launched www.ChickAdvisor.biz, a partner site to ChickAdvisor.com that allows businesses to create and manage their own listings within ChickAdvisor.  For $500/year a business can create an enhanced business listing with featured search results, featured deals, multiple pictures, google map integration, which appears on ChickAdvisor.com where members can add their reviews.

What’s up next for Alex and Ali?  Ali tells me that ChickAdvisor is set to launch a brand new redesign with a cleaner, more stylish edge as well as some new functionality requested by ChickAdvisor members.  The new design will be revealed later this month.

I wish Ali and Alex all the best in with this venture. Proof again that branded infotainment is a coming trend in financing and producing original content.