The rest of the products spread out into infinity away from the spiked cluster of big-ticket items as popularity decreases, creating what we call a Long Tail. The Long Tail is really a retailing concept that abandons the traditional merchandising methods in favor of the equalizing power of the Internet.

What is really exciting about the Long Tail is the size of it.  The potential market for a product may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the limits of the traditional marketplace.

Sounds Good

When I first heard of the Long Tail it was in reference to the music industry. Everyone’s music taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them; hence, Napster and now iTunes and Amazon.   A hit and an obscure song are now equal, both just entries in a database retrieved on demand, both equally worthy of being carried by the store. A song is an entry in a database that anyone can do.  Popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

A Global Marketplace

With online distribution and media, we are living in a world of abundance and the differences between products are vast.  What matters is not where customers are, or even how many of them are seeking a particular product. What matters is that they exist somewhere in the world, and that they can find your virtual storefront.

The communities of the Web – close constituents sharing ideas, social networks, and user-generated content – direct these users to offbeat content and experiences. People can share and discover content from anywhere on the web.

Anything Can Work

StuffOnMyCat.com is an example of a business that found its obscure niche and created something for that niche to rally around.  Cat lovers!  The website is a celebration of cats and everything in the world you can put on a cat to make it look cute.  Users are able to post pictures as well as purchase products with their favorite StuffOnMyCat pictures.  A lonely cat lover decided to express the hilarity and cuteness that can come from taking pictures of your cat in various poses with different objects.  This niche has always been there but now people from around the world can gather in an online community.  There is even a social network for cats, catster.com.

The funny thing is that I am not really even into cats and I don’t have any pets.  But not only have I found these niche products online, I could easily stock up on t-shirts and tote bags from the site.

Scary Scarcity

Traditional media has limited resources, creating a world of scarcity.  Chris Anderson, a writer at Wired Magazine and maven associated to the popularization of the concept of the “Long Tail,” will tell you that “big hits” of yesteryear are created by limited resources and are based on estimates of demand.  Anderson argues in his book “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More,” that “hits” are hardwired into human psychology, the combinatorial effect of conformity and word of mouth.

Check out his blog.

With the Internet, an otherwise offbeat or obscure product can be a best seller when it is a focal point of a niche that found one another because the physical limitations of shelf space are no longer an issue.  By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, any business can discover new markets and expand existing ones.

Embrace Niches

The companies Anderson singles out in his article and book about the Long Tail are Netflix, Amazon, eBay, and Google.  Each can offer you your quirky movie, book or vintage radio as well as the Top 40 hits in pop culture. Combine enough obscure products on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than the “hits.”

Embrace niches – with your product available to the world you can capture that piece of the Long Tail and leverage these sizable niches that are being underserved.  Keeping your ear to the ground, better yet wires, you will always know what your customer wants and be able to give it to them.

Be Available

The Internet is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere in the world.  If your website is not easily found on the Internet, how do you expect your niche to find you?  To drive traffic to your website, a straightforward optimization strategy that incorporates structural improvements, carefully crafted content, and link-building efforts, is needed.

The easiest way to increase link-building efforts is to involve your business in social media and connect with the consumers who are true evangelists – those who will spread the word about your product and help grow your business exponentially. Engage with your customers with relevant topics centered around your business.  Make your business available to your community and your niche – let the Long Tail effect grow your business organically.

Connecting

We decided to turn our day off for Martin Luther King Day into a day of service.  When I started looking around for ways we could give back to the New Orleans community, I turned to a great organization called HandsOn New Orleans, which has connected over 17,000 volunteers to recovery and restoration efforts across the Gulf Coast since 2005.

I chose the Save Our Cemeteries cleanup event since I knew we were going to have a large group and the event seemed tailor made for our needs.  I also know how important cemeteries are to the identity and history of New Orleans.

Digging in

Despite a lingering fear of zombies and the prospect of getting dirty, 28 Mudbug Media employees answered the call for volunteers on Martin Luther King Day.  We spent the morning pulling weeds, raking up leaves from between the graves, hauling trash bags full of debris to the dumpsters and trimming branches from the cemetery’s many oak trees.

Check out some pictures of our employees hard at work.

Giving Back

While the work was hard and the day was unusually warm, it felt really good to be able to lend a hand.  The cemetery was swarming with fellow volunteers from local universities and groups of tourists from across the country and I think everyone had a good time.

By lunchtime, the historic cemetery was in much better shape than we found it.  Graves were clean and tidy, we all got a little sun, no zombies had escaped and we all felt a little bit better for helping preserve a bit of New Orleans on our day off.

All politics aside, anyone who has ever known and loved New Orleans knows how heartbreaking it was to watch hours turn into days and days into weeks as we waited for much needed help and supplies to arrive in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

We also know how unbelievably great the global response to our own natural disaster was and how much every little effort helped.

Now, as Haitians the world over do their best to help the impoverished country get through this tragedy, we can pitch in to lend a helping hand.  If you would like to donate to the relief effort, Google has a great crisis response page that can link you to a number of relief agencies.

You can also find out how to donate via text message, which a number of us here at Mudbug Media have already done.

While our hearts go out to Haitians everywhere, the Mudbug Media family also has a direct connection to the island nation.  Annick Mégie worked as a graphic designer at Mudbug Media last year after coming over from an internship with our friends at Beuerman Miller Fitzgerald.

A truly gifted designer, Annick also brought a shining personality and unfailing kindness and generosity to our team.  Annick made the tough decision in mid-December to return to Haiti to be with her family.  While we were sad to see her go, we have kept in close contact with Annick.

The most important e-mail of the week arrived yesterday letting us know that Annick and her family survived the quake and are doing well despite the conditions.

Millions more are in desperate need of our help and support right now.

Please take some time out of your day to donate to the ongoing relief effort.

Every dollar helps.

By taking advantage of new technology and advanced delivery systems, Mudbug can help you create an effective e-mail newsletter platform to drive traffic to your Web site and your front door.

Evolution

Companies have been advertising through the mail since the days of the Pony Express, but a folded piece of paper can only go so far.

Typically sent out on a monthly basis, e-mail newsletters have a huge advantage over traditional paper mailers in that they save on shipping and postage fees and represent an environmentally friendly way to reach out to potential and current clients.

The monthly timeline creates a consistency and familiarity that elevate e-mail newsletters above the level of unfocused mass advertisements.

Advantages

Recipients can receive customized information through the use of our dynamic content system that will increase the chances of click through traffic, leading people directly to your site.

Surveys contained in the newsletters allow companies to gather demographic information on their audience, information that can then be used to tailor each newsletter’s topic to specific groups and get a feel for the core audience.

If we gather information on each recipient’s gender, we can then send men stories more directly associated with males and women stories with a more female oriented slant.  We can gear content towards other information as well, from age and location to interests and career type.

Trackable Advertising

Dynamic content can also be used to effectively streamline your advertising capabilities.  We keep track of each time a recipient clicks on an ad, allowing us to tell you who was looking at what and connect that information with each recipient’s demographic information so you can know which ads are most effective with each category of subscriber.

There’s really no way to do that with printed out mailers.

What I recommend

For companies just branching out into the e-mail newsletter world, Constant Contact is a good, solid program that allows you to get the word out in a standardized format.

The Campaigner e-mail platform allows for greater customization and freedom with newsletter design for small to mid-sized newsletter campaigns up to 25,000 subscribers.

For the tech savvy looking to set up a widespread e-mail newsletter with full design and programming customization and the option of dynamic content, Lyris HQ is the way to go.  Lyris gives you the capability to reach upwards of 30,000 people each month and track every aspect of each subscriber’s interactions with the newsletter, including the advertisements.

So whether you are trying to reach a few clients in your backyard or thousands of contacts across the country, Mudbug Media can help you every step of the way.

Mobile web usage increased 131 percent from March 2008 through the end of 2009, and growth is expected to continue for the next few years. As users become more comfortable placing winning bids on their iPhones or ordering airline tickets through their Blackberry, all sites can cash in on the explosive growth of the mobile web.

Separate Google Index

Google has created a separate index for mobile web sites, giving sites customized for mobile use the edge on the less populated and less cluttered portion of the search engine and making it easier for web sites to stand out in the crowd.

eBay & iPods

eBay has distributed over 6 million copies of their mobile app, with 1.5 million copies going out between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, increasing users 300 percent within one month. iPod Touch sales jumped 57 percent over the Christmas holidays, opening mobile web browsing capabilities to a significant segment of the marketplace that had until now been limited to desktops and laptops.

Easy Upgrade

Customizing an existing site to run on handheld devices creates another sales avenue and limitless opportunities for potential customers to find and purchase online products. Existing sites can be easily adapted to fit the needs of mobile users, carrying over the site’s most used features to optimize mobile web usage.

Unlimited Sales Opportunities

Customers essentially remain in the marketplace 24 hours a day with the mobile web never more than a cell phone or handheld device away. In an arena where consumer use is growing faster than businesses are evolving, this is an opportunity to become a leader in your industry in the mobile web.

Time to Act

If you are seriously considering utilizing the web to either help sell your products or sell yourself, you must enter the mobile environment.  Last year if you wanted to build a web site you had to budget for search engine optimization.  The same goes for the mobile site this year.

Approach to Landing Pages

If you don’t already have an analytics solution installed on your site, get on it – analytic data will answer the who/what/when/where/why questions about visitors to a website and help create a robust, user-friendly on-page experience. If you are already working with an analytics suite, then congratulations – you’re well on your way to determining landing page success.

Within your analytics suite, you’ve no doubt identified the keywords that generate visits to your website. Whether the keywords are paid or unpaid, they represent an insight into your visitors. Some keywords result in high interactivity, while others result in high bounce rates. Regardless of the outcome, keywords help you understand the user’s mindset. With some keen judgment you can optimize the pages visitors land on through PPC campaigns and increase your customer base.

What makes a good landing page?

A good landing page should satisfy the reason the searcher clicked on your ad and also direct them to the predetermined goal – your e-commerce page, a video you’re promoting, or an affiliate link. Here’s a short list of items to keep in mind when developing a landing page:

• Web surfers are page skimmers – make sure they get the desired information by using bulleted lists (like this one) and bold, emphasized text
• Use eye-catching imagery and appeal to their senses – emotional connections are powerful
• Direction – get the user to the goal and make sure the trail is well lit along the way
• Keep it simple, stupid – no one is going to read 2,000 words about baseball equipment if they landed on your page searching for “history of baseball”

The Keyword Strategy

Separate your keywords into two groups: those with good interactivity and those with poor interactivity. Identify any trends within the two groups and try to understand what drives them.

Let’s say you run a website called Baseball Equipment USA. Chances are the visitors with good interactivity are those that click on your ad when they search “baseball equipment”. The visitors with poor engagement are those that were searching “history of baseball in America”. Take these keywords and make them “negative keywords” – words that do not generate conversions and on the whole decrease the average time on site, pages per visit and other metrics. If you’re using Google AdWords you should find it fairly easy to insert negative keywords.

Landing Page Execution

To increase the engagement and conversion rates for visitors that search “baseball cleats” or “types of baseball bats,” generate some content that will satisfy their needs but also draw focus to your other products. From the analytics data you can tell what drives these searches – whether it’s price or product differentiation. Write about the innovations of baseball equipment to draw the visitor’s attention to your product line and help differentiate your offering. Be creative, and make sure to take into consideration the reasons people are visiting. Create compelling landing pages targeted to particular search users, and direct them to the right places.

More Landing Page Tips

• Don’t limit your campaign to just one landing page – create as many as you need to target different potential customer segments
• Make sure the landing page matches the ad copy – give people exactly what they’re looking for
• Use Google’s Website Optimizer to generate landing pages with the best conversion results

Better idea? Make it mobile. Dynamic content is why web browsers entered the mobile arena. Also, wherever an emergency occurs, someone has a cell phone in a pocket or purse. You don’t have to walk away from someone who’s injured or wait for a computer to wake up. Instant info gives instant help.

The trick to building effective mobile versions of existing web pages is to cut out everything except what people need for mobile use. For Ochsner’s ER page, we focused on the widget and minimized images to provide a quick-loading page with exactly the information needed in case of an emergency. We kept the address, phone number, hospital photo and link to Google Maps for directions.

The Google Maps integration works with any mobile browser. On an iPhone, clicking “Map it with Google” loads the Maps application and gives you directions. On other mobile phones, Google Maps loads within the page. Either way, you’re on your way.

We’re hoping you never actually need this particular feature. We’d like it to go entirely unused. Just in case, though, bookmark ochsner.org/er on your mobile browser so you can check wait times without any hassle or delay.

Let’s be careful out there.