Recognizing this, Microsoft Advertising and Toyota have returned for a third season of MSN’s hit series, “Appetite for Life” this time turning to America’s Deep South – a region that is known for its lively people, great food, and culinary contributions. Unfortunately, recent natural disasters have created difficult economic circumstances for the region but, with the help of host Andrew Zimmern, Microsoft Advertising and Toyota will lend a hand to restaurant owners and citizens directly affected.

While visiting different cities in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, Zimmern brings both fun and culinary experiences to communities in an effort to raise funds for community rebuilding programs. These programs include the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, and Meals on Wheels Atlanta, among others. In addition to delivering over 4,000 meals throughout the show’s efforts to date, Microsoft Advertising and Toyota have pledged $10,000 to Feeding America and offer viewers the opportunity to donate throughout the series at http://appetiteforlife.msn.com. To date, donations including the pledge from Microsoft Advertising and Toyota have totaled to over $37,000!

In 20+ episodes consisting of fundraiser derbies and tailgate parties, Zimmern visits 16 spirited cities, all representing the heart and hospitality of the South, in hopes to bring awareness and much needed financial support to the region. Experience and learn from these great cities while watching unique, exciting activities including a Jambalaya cook off, charity cooking classes, car races at a local speedway and more! Zimmern will take you on a ride as you explore the great food of America’s Deep South.

We invite you to join us on this road trip built for good and to check out the episodes on MSN.

Enjoy!

Stephen Kim, General Manager for Global Creative Solutions, Microsoft

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertising/archive/2012/02/22/toyota-microsoft-advertising-appetite-for-life-deep-south.aspx

We are at Day 2 of the SES London event and today I have attended an interesting session about how to increase your social media presence with no or a small budget. The speakers showed us a wealth of great free to low-cost tools. Combined with a clever strategy these will have you up and running in no time. By leveraging these great resources, you can use social media to drive new business, create awareness, and become engaged with your target audience.

Your social strategy and free tools to help you get started

Andrew Girdwood, Media Innovations Director, Bigmouthmedia, starts explaining that our social media strategy cannot look cheap and that the most important is to have a strategy:

1. Monitor cheaply and react quickly.

2. Mention people.

3. To have follow a strategy is better than taking shortcuts.

There are lots of different sites and platforms to use: Pinterest with Pinspire, Stylepin, Minglewing, Reform Revolution, Thinng, GetVega and Gentlemint., and also different free tools:

http://trap.it – Learns your tastes and continues to deliver “on topic” content.

http://beta.strawberryj.am – Shows you the links the people you follow share most.

http://www.pearltrees.com – Another tool that serves up content you may like from the web.

www.bufferapp.com – Shares your tweets on Facebook when you add #fb

Set time apart to engage and develop relationship – automate some other social output

Next on the stage was Paul Madden, Owner, Automica Limited , who tells us that the ROI for businesses on a budget makes it important for businesses to automate as much as you can. Influence takes time, hard work and money. Businesses need to find a solution to have it cheaper, faster and easier. You need to set time every day to step in, engage and develop relationships. “Automate the rest or the ROI will swallow you whole”.

Why is that important to post often? It helps your brand awareness, buzz and seeding content

Tools to use? Tweetadder (Twitter only), Socialoomph (Twitter and Facebook), Dlvr.it (RSS to tweet / wall update), Social enhancer (Twitter only)

What’s next?

Add your social accounts: Facebook, Twitter. Potentially you can post to blog platforms too: WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous, Drupal, Joomla, anything with an API.

Schedule updates .

Configure tweetcockpit and email notifications in other channels.

Tools to amplify your volume:

Tweetadder: Lots of automation tools around following and unfollowing, schedule tweets, auto follow lists of people and auto unfollow non reciprocal users

Dlvr.it – Takes a feed, applies filters and posts to a network

How to increase your social presence?

Marcus Tober, CTO, SearchMetrics Inc., reckons the following will help you increase your social presence:

1. Monitor regular events that are important in your industry

2. Find Influencers for those topics: retweet or mention them and use your followers during the event to jump on the buzz stream

Are these tactics working for both Twitter and Facebook?

No, those can‘t directly be used in Facebook. Twitter is much quicker, contents tend to stay fresh for a shorter period of time. Topic Hijacking“ is much harder in Facebook – posting on brand‘s walls ect. is not very effective. According to Marcus Tober, Twitter provides the best value for your money. Facebook marketing tends to require superb content and a complete social media strategy – both are hard to come by when your‘re on a budget.

We’ll be back tomorrow at SES London. View our images here, follow us on Twitter or join our digital advertising, search and social conversations on LinkedIn

Thanks,

Nadia Hamraie

EMEA Web Marketing Manager, Microsoft advertising

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2012/02/22/social-media-week-day-2-social-media-solutions-on-a-budget-at-seslondon.aspx

If you’ve been following us on Twitter, you’ve most likely seen the 10% off discount code we’ve been tweeting over the past few weeks.  If not and you haven’t registered yet, just do so by 2/27 and use code smx10bing when you do to get the discount.

Here’s a quick summary of the sessions where you’ll find Microsoft staff speaking:

• Tuesday 2/28 @ 10am: Best Practices with adCenter for Bing and Yahoo
• Wednesday 2/29 @ 10am: Bing Webmaster Theater Session
• Wednesday 2/29 @ 5pm: In-House PPC: Organizational PPC Challenges Solutions
• Thursday 3/1 @ 2:20pm: Ask the Paid Search Reps – Open QA

In addition to visiting us at booth #406, and visiting the sessions above, there’s one more piece of info we want to share with you: the User Experience Research team is also going to be at SMX and they’ve asked me to pass along this information to attendees:

Are you an Account Manager or SEM Specialist who is passionate about SEM? Come share experiences about your role and the tools you use and be entered in a drawing to win an XBOX 360 Kinect bundle!

Participate in a 30 minute 1:1 interview session or a lunchtime focus group at the Microsoft adCenter Feedback Lounge. Your feedback will help prioritize future improvements to Microsoft adCenter and you’ll automatically be entered in a drawing to win an XBOX 360 Kinect bundle in addition to a gratuity…. and of course some conference SWAG!

It’s simple to participate. Just click here to answer a few questions and select a session time. You do not need to be an adCenter user to participate. All sessions will take place in the adCenter Feedback Lounge (Meeting Room C1).

For questions, or additional information contact Safiya Bhojawala (safiyab@micrsoft.com) or Angela Moulden (angelam@microsoft.com).

View XBOX 360 Kinect drawing rules here.

So, there you have it.  Have a great time at SMX and if you enter the drawing, good luck!

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2012/02/22/smx-west-use-our-10-off-discount-code-share-your-thoughts-and-enter-to-win-an-xbox-smx-ppc.aspx

Microsoft and Yahoo! are keen to bring advertisers the benefits of our combined audiences as soon as possible. We have completed the transition of organic searches globally, which means that any user performing a search on Yahoo! from a PC or a mobile is provided with Bing-powered results. With regards to consolidation of the audiences on one single ad platform, it is already live in the US, Canada and India and we have identified an opportunity to accelerate its implementation in the UK, France, and Ireland.

UK advertisers to access a combined audience this April

We are beginning to transition Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts to Microsoft Advertising adCenter today, on the 22nd of February. We would then expect to start ramping Yahoo! traffic to the adCenter platform as early as the 19th of March and to complete the paid search transition before the end of April for the UK, France and Ireland. As promised, our commitment is to keep you informed on the developments and any actions you may need to take during this transition period.

Next steps and key actions

As an adCenter advertiser you don’t need to do anything just yet. If you also advertise on Yahoo!, you can now access an easy-to-use portal from your Yahoo! Search Marketing account to migrate your Yahoo! campaigns to Microsoft Advertising adCenter. As a Yahoo! advertiser, you should also have received detailed instructions from Yahoo! by now on how to successfully transfer your campaigns to adCenter.

Then, starting around March 19th we expect to progressively start serving adCenter ads to Yahoo! searchers. The entire Yahoo! paid search volume is expected to be transitioned to adCenter within approximately two weeks from that date. Below is what you will need to do during this second phase of the paid search transition:

• Understand new editorial policies. All Yahoo! and Microsoft advertisers will be subject to the new editorial guidelines created jointly by Yahoo! and Microsoft. You should review the updated editorial guidelines to see if your ads and keywords may be affected so that you can update them even before you transition your account to Microsoft Advertising adCenter.
• Adjust your budget for increased traffic. As the Yahoo! Search traffic ramps on adCenter you will see an increase in your usual traffic volume on adCenter. We recommend you to increase your campaign budgets to capture this additional traffic. Once Yahoo! Search traffic has fully ramped on adCenter, your budget on adCenter should probably be equal to your current spend on each platform. As a routine best practice, remember to increase your budget if it is within a 20% range of being fully depleted.
• Adjust your bid strategy to maintain your competitiveness. As new advertisers join the auction consider adjusting your campaign bids to prepare for increased competition. You may also want to expand your bid across all match types and use negative keywords to ensure your impressions remain steady and relevant.

In the next few weeks, we will continue to publish more in-depth recommendations on this blog for you to prepare and set up your campaigns for success in the combined marketplace. If you cannot wait, there is already a wealth of resources published on searchalliance.com/uk, including detailed FAQs and a feature comparison highlighting the main differences between Yahoo! Search Marketing and adCenter and how to leverage them. 

Towards a competitive search marketing alternative

Yahoo! Search and Bing will soon offer a competitive search offering that provides advertisers both quality audiences and opportunities to leverage strategic partnerships to efficiently deliver a strong return on investment. As mentioned above, we expect to complete the transition in the UK, France and Ireland before the end of April 2012. This means our advertisers are now just a couple months away from benefiting from the new joint audience. By then, you will be able to advertise on the full Yahoo! Search, Bing and their partner networks traffic through your adCenter campaigns.

Until then, we stay at your side to support you through this transition phase, to ensure there is minimal impact on your business.

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2012/02/22/microsoft-and-yahoo-search-alliance-the-migration-starts-today-in-uk-and-france.aspx

Article source: http://www.bing.com/community/thread/9672330.aspx

Planning a trip like this can be a lot of work but, thanks to Chevrolet, Microsoft Advertising and The FADER, Inc., it just got easier. And for those unable to travel this year but still crave the experience, it’s now possible to immerse yourself in the music and festival scene from the comfort of home.

Chevrolet partnered with Microsoft Advertising’s Global Solutions team and The FADER to promote its Chevrolet Sonic and reach a young, mobile audience by creating Sound Discovery, the first digital advertising campaign and curated tool of its kind to America’s favorite music festivals. With extensive editorial content developed by The FADER staff, Sound Discovery offers music lovers and festival goers the opportunity to now:

· Access their favorite festivals, artists and music through comprehensive, guided experiences from wherever they are and across screens – PC, tablet, mobile and Xbox. Building this experience in HTML HTML5 with down-level flash players for audio and video makes this virtual compatibility possible.

· Get all-access festival coverage to Noise Pop, Coachella, Ultra and SXSW, including how to get there, which bands to see, where to eat, after parties to hit, and points of interest to explore nearby – all found on MSN and backed by the power by Bing:

· Whom to listen and how to see: through the Bing Music Artist page, people can access and preview almost every full-length song their favorite artists have ever created, as well as information about where they’re playing next, how to find the best seats and ticket prices, artist videos and photos, and more.

· Where to go: On each festival page, Sound Discovery’s Plan module will help people find tickets, driving directions, nearest hotels, campgrounds, restaurants, transportation to and from the festival site via Bing map apps – all the one-click planning tools a festival attendee needs.

We have a feeling millions of consumers will enjoy Sound Discovery. This may be the first time we’ve built a campaign specifically around music festivals, but bringing this level of technology and creativity to a campaign is a jam session we’re well accustomed to!

Kick back, relax and enjoy the sweet sounds from the road or the comfort of your own home!

Stephen Kim, General Manager, Global Creative Solutions, Microsoft Advertising

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertising/archive/2012/02/21/chevrolet-and-microsoft-bring-america-s-music-festivals-to-you-wherever-you-may-be.aspx

adCenter Advertiser Support

Getting Started with adCenterWhere’s My Ad?Low Clicks/Impressions/PositionEditorial Policy GuidanceBidding, Budgets BillingGeographic Demographic TargetingContent Ads Syndicated SearchCampaign Analytics, Conversion Tracking ReportingadCenter DesktopMicrosoft Advertising IntelligenceadCenter API DevelopmentBing ShoppingGeneral Troubleshooting / MiscellaneousFeature Requests and Feedback

pubCenter Publisher Support

pubCenter Web PublisherMicrosoft pubCenter for MobileMicrosoft pubCenter for Windows 8 Apps

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/api/archive/2012/02/21/heads-up-reporting-delays-expected-in-microsoft-advertising-adcenter-api.aspx

When a visitor comes to your webpage you’ll be surprised on how large the impact of great targeted ad copy, good images and relevant products are. Improving only one of these elements can better your conversions with 5-10% says Nathan Richter, Strategic Services Director at Monetate.

Landing page optimization tactics and their impact

If your message, image and merchandise are aligned this could improve your average conversion rate by 5-20%. Product ‘badging’ -adding emblems with a rating- can improve conversions by as much as 55% according to Richter, international geographical messaging can improve conversions by as much as 100%. He also points out that we should think of landing ‘sessions’ opposed to ‘pages’. When your visitor starts looking around on your site, it should be easy to click back to the initial product he or she showed an interest in.

Putting of off ustomers never helped anyone

A while ago I watched ‘Alex Polizzi, the Fixer ‘ on the BBC. For those not familiar with the program: a sometimes rather scary business woman visits a struggling business and gives them brutally honest advice on what they have to improve to survive. One week a furniture business was under scrutiny. Alex’s beady eye had fallen on the family businesses brochure (yep never mind website!) The headline was negative; the image showed a far too young woman being launched out of a lazy boy chair and the body text did not focus on their unique selling points. No wonder their spend-ready audience wasn’t queuing at the tills as a result of this.

How to attract customers on your landing pages with ad copy

Not only brochures but plenty of websites would benefit from a critical review. Karl Blanks chairman at Conversion Rate Experts shared some copy writing best practices for landing pages.

1. ‘Your landing page is only as good as its creator’ says Blanks. He recommends finding someone in your business that has a lot of ‘face time’ with the customer and let them review your landing pages. Does the information answer your customer’s common questions? Does it put frequently voiced concerns to bed? Does it highlight those features that often sway the customer to buy?

2. He also recons buying (or signing up) yourself on your site is a sobering experience. Blanks and his colleague ordered a shed once following this process and realized (apart from site issues) that – when the shed arrived – the parts did not fit through the house.

Finally Karl shared some copy writing tips to make your landing page too tempting to resist:

1. Open with recognisable line (that makes them think ‘hm hm that’s me!)
2. Create a headline that makes people want to read more.
3. Add USPs as bullet points.
4. Summarise the main benefits of your products.
5. Ensure the font size is not too small.
6. Add links to enable visitors to jump to the section of their interest.
7. Ensure the first paragraph captures the main points so that people know what they’ll get when they read on.
8. Add a call to action at the bottom.
9. Give a guarantee (to reduce risk).
10. Add an incentive for prompt action.

We’ll be back tomorrow at SES London. View our images of day 1 here, follow us on Twitter or join our digital advertising, search and social conversations on LinkedIn. Don’t forget that tomorrow at noon you can join the round table forum with Yahoo! and Bing on the search alliance.

Simone Schuurer – EMEA Community Site Manager

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2012/02/21/ses-london-day-1-how-to-optimize-your-landing-pages-for-conversion-happiness-seslondon.aspx

I have been trying to get a good position of my website. www.stellarphoenixsol.com we offer data recovery in Princeton NJ 08540. Can anyone suggest anything? I do have a SEO company working but I have not seen any results.

Article source: http://www.bing.com/community/thread/9672311.aspx

Whether you’ve never run a PPC campaign before or you’re a seasoned veteran, no doubt you understand the value in leveraging the expertise of others to get up to speed on how to be successful in a new venture. If you fall into the latter category, we’re hoping you’ll be willing to share your expertise in the weeks to come.

From now through April, we’ll follow the adventures of three PPC newbies as they build and manage search advertising campaigns in adCenter.  They’ll be checking in every now and again with a blog post to let us know what they’re learning as they create and optimize their campaigns.  We’ll start them off with $100 in advertising credit each month (or the GBP equivalent), and each business will earn additional free advertising credits for tweets containing their hash tag, and for shares, comments and likes generated by their campaign Facebook page. PLUS, we’ll match their winnings to their charity of choice for those same tweets, shares, comments, and likes!*

Follow along, cheer them on and offer your own PPC tips as these everyday business owners become savvy search advertisers. Help them win big by sharing, commenting on, and liking items on their campaign pages and by tweeting using their #BingPPCTip hash tags. Be sure to come back often—we’re giving prizes to social networkers like YOU every week. To learn more, visit the Campaign to Fame tab in the left rail on our Facebook page (you’ll need to click “Like” to access the info).  Once that’s done, click on “Enter to Win” along to the top navigation to be included in the weekly drawing (be sure to review the terms and conditions!), then get busy “liking,” tweeting, commenting, and sharing!

* Each business will earn $1 (or the GBP equivalent) per tweet using their campaign hash tag, and per comment, share or like on their campaign page up to a maximum of $1,000 (or the GBP equivalent). Microsoft Advertising will match each small business’ winnings (with a Microsoft Advertising adCenter credit) to the charity they have selected.

Article source: http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2012/02/20/smb-bing-ppc.aspx