Li’l Engine is growing up! An introduction to new blog format and other exciting updates
Dear Li’l Engine members and readers,
I am honored to introduce myself as your new content editor and go-to guy for the revamp Li’l engine website and community.
During the next 6 months I will be working with top designers, programmers and writers together to bring you a better browsing experience, more SEM / SEO and internet marketing related news and online tools to help boost your productivity and sales.
Our little website is now into its 7th year, during this period we have evolved and grown alongside the SEM and internet marketing industry, which has now grown into a 23 billion dollar monster.
“They say a year in the Internet business is like a dog year.. equivalent to seven years in a regular person’s life. In other words, it’s evolving fast and faster.”
– Vint Cerf
As we start the 3 quarter of 2009 and well into the global financial crisis, the SEM industry continues to grow steadily as more corporations and business see SEM as a cheaper and more effective way of advertising.
While a major new player in the internet advertising market is breaking out and making businesses and marketers take notice. I am speaking of course about Social Media Marketing.
Lets take a look at some quick stats;
What is interesting from this graph when comparing SEO and Social Media Marketing is that only 8% of marketers counted SEO as not relevant / don’t know, where as 27% answered the same for Social Media Marketing.
This is great news for SEO’s as the market is now almost completely aware of the benefit of SEO, but the stat also introduces an uneducated / uncertain market for Social Media Marketing, perhaps where SEO was 7 years ago, what does this mean?
It means there is potential to convert the 27% of marketers who either don’t know about social media marketing or don’t care into the same 8% for SEO!
I see Social Media Marketing as a great potential for internet marketers in the next 2 – 3 quarters, but to achieve great results we must educate ourselves, the public and in particular the business owners / corporations to the benefits Social Media Marketing and most importantly how it alongside SEO and other internet marketing strategies will combine to generate more business and ultimately increase the bottom-line, more sales and revenue.
The goal of the new Lil Engine website is to continue to bring our readers the most up to date information on SEO and SEM but also to focus on new emerging strategies that are going to shape the future of internet marketing.
Updates you will see on Lil Engine in the last 2 quarters of 2009
Li’l Engine has a unique structure planned for this service which will be announced shortly
All about our readers
Who should read our blog and join our discussion forums?
SEO’s.
Whether you are a seasoned SEO looking for the latest search engine trends or a novice SEO, Li’l Engine will give you the in-depth insight along with clear explanations.
Web designers.
O’dear, I’ve gone and said the D word… Truth be told there are many capable web designers out there that are interested in SEO and internet marketing. Why? Because it is an added value to their clients and employers, designers that can provide a stylish, search engine friendly and conversion driven websites are hard to find, but are desperately needed within the industry.
Marketers.
Are you still wondering what all the fuss is about with internet marketing? Consider my post above, internet advertising is worth $23 billion dollars and growing, can you afford not to educate yourself?
Business Owners.
A little knowledge goes a very long way, next time you are approached by an SEO company, you will be armed with a certain amount of knowledge that will help you judge the competency of the SEO and you might just save yourself some $$$ at the same time! Those that are a little adventurous and curious can also try out some of our strategies themselves, the discussion forum will be a great place to network with other business owners and to get advice from seasoned SEO’s.
All about me
My name is John Chen, a creative director and accounts manager for a large E-business firm in Brisbane, Australia. My day to day duties include web design, following up on SEO campaigns, traffic and conversion ROI analysis and speaking with my clients whom are generally small to medium business owners.
My background in internet marketing begun by way of fire, a start-up eshop for consumer electronics, I had knowledge in web and graphic design but little knowledge in internet marketing.
It was a steep learning curve to find out why my website wasn’t making any sales, but luckily for me, I had 2 great mentors that were prepared to answer my dumb questions and always pointed me in the right direction. They were Napoleon Pham from evrsoft and Dejan Petrovic from DejanSEO.
But I realize not everybody is as privileged to have access to mentors, this is one of the major motivations that I decided to take on the role as the new editor of Li’l Engine, to help build a community where experts and novices may share and learn.
I am very much looking forward to bringing about the changes in Li’l Engine outlined above as well as chatting and participating in discussions with you on our blog and forum.
In the mean time, please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions for me or just want to say hi, I would love to hear from some of our regular readers. Alternatively if you want to contact me directly, I can be reached on info [at] johnchen.com.au .
To start following the progress of our development on twitter @little_engine head to
http://twitter.com/little_engine
– John
