Following the results of a recent Prophet survey, Forbes released a list of the five brands U.S. consumers viewed as most likely to fall flat by 2015.

The brands are below, listed in descending order by most likely to drop off:

• Kodak (with 27% of the overall vote)
• Netflix (19%)
• U.S. Post Office (18%)
• RIM – Blackberry (14%)
• Sears (11%)

While these brands once held dominant spots in the marketplace, most consumers cited the organizations’ collective

inability to stay in touch with their customers’ needs as a reason for their slip into irrelevancy.

The top mistakes consumers listed included:

• A failure to understand what customers want, in addition to providing an inadequate customer service
  experience.
• Lag time in innovation and a failure to respond to changes in competitive and environmental landscapes.
• Pricing inaccuracies (nickel and diming customers for services once considered common courtesy).
• Ineffective management and outdated business models.
• Inability to keep up with the digital revolution. On the flip side, companies listed as best for keeping up with the times included the New York Times for its mobile app and the American Red Cross for its charitable giving social media efforts.

The five companies cited as most likely to disappear were guilty of at least two of the mistakes listed above; who can forget Netflix’s blunder with naming, customer service and pricing? At the core of each mistake above is the central need for brands to stay engaged with their customers to ensure continued relevancy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, respondents praised Nordstrom, Amazon, Disney, Southwest Airlines and Zappos for being responsive to their audiences’ ever-changing worlds.  Thus, businesses are tasked with not only being responsive to industry changes, but also being innovative, embracing digital technology and evolving their business models to meet customer expectations.

As companies seek to expand their global advertising reach online, it’s impossible to ignore China. Despite the number of restrictions associated with advertising in China, the size of the potential audience is enticing. Unfortunately, China places restrictions on the flow of information into and within its borders, a fact which may discourage many companies from investing the time and money to understand the habits and interests of this tremendous market.

When expanding your company’s advertising reach abroad, the first thing to understand is the online habits of a particular culture or region. While it may seem obvious to some, it is easy to overlook what may work in another country simply because it does not work in the U.S. (e.g. while banner ads are not as successful in the U.S., they do perform better abroad). These differences are further highlighted in China, where the culture, freedom, and even written language differ so greatly from our own. The following tips will help you plan your online venture in China:

Clicks Trump Type
Take the Chinese text, for example. The complication of typing Chinese characters has resulted in greater popularity of web pages that require less typing and integrate more clickable content. If your company’s site requires a larger amount of typing to navigate, you might consider clickable images.

Baidu Reigns Supreme
Familiar with Google and all that is necessary to promote your company through the all-powerful U.S. engine?  Become acquainted with Baidu, China’s top search engine. It commands over 75% of the market share to Google’s almost 20%. While Baidu does have many similarities to Google, it is a completely different search engine that warrants your attention if China is on your radar.

Learn to Sina Weibo…Not Tweet
With the great deal of control the government has over the citizens of China, one might expect that social media is non-existent. Common U.S. platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are almost completely unused, yet social media is still very prevalent. One social site, Sina Weibo, is very similar to Twitter. Sina Weibo’s top 100 participants have a combined 198.2 million+ followers, a stale number, which may have exceeded Twitter’s top 100 participants at this time.

A company must ask itself if the lure of the large Chinese market is worth hurdling the obstacles of restrictions and an unknown culture. With some research, some flexibility, and a willingness to adapt to a very different set of cultural rules, one might find China a worthwhile investment. Remember, there are 513 million internet users in China. This equals the number of people living in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Italy combined, so it may just be worth it for you.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, bill H.R. 3261), which would increase penalties for trafficking copyright materials, streaming unauthorized videos and selling counterfeit drugs or goods online, will be voted on by the House Judiciary committee when congress resumes after winter break.

Chairman Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), who introduced the bill in October of 2011, said, “This much-needed legislation makes it harder for foreign thieves to steal and sell America’s intellectual property. The Stop Online Piracy Act protects the profits, products and jobs that rightly belong to American innovators.” But the bill has been controversial.

By Meg Archer, SEM Specialist

When a site links to you, what do you do? 90 gives advice on how to create a linking strategy that is beneficial to your SEO plan as a whole.

To implement a strong SEO strategy, businesses must create a relevant linking strategy.  To be most effective, sometimes businesses or agencies must use another site to syndicate content. As is often the case with third-party listings, this relationship can get tricky. But, if you follow some simple rules, your site will reap the benefits of well planned and executed SEO and linking strategies.

Most obviously, if your content is syndicated on a partner site, ensure it links to your original article. Simon Heseltine, director of SEO at AOL Inc. and writer for Search Engine Watch, supports this recommendation. “This tells the search engines the location of the original, after they determine its duplicate content.” If the syndicate includes a link back to your original content, not simply your homepage, this will build credibility for your site.

However, it is important not to have a link to the syndication on your site because this creates reciprocal linking. We strongly recommend against reciprocal linking because it often comes from link farms, is inorganic and can negatively impact your site ranking in search results.

By Amanda Jurgens, Account Coordinator

In today’s digital world, consumers are flooded with marketing emails.  How do marketers create email campaigns that stand out and avoid the dreaded “unsubscribe?”

Hours of design, copy and proofing go into sending a marketing email. But, if emails do not solicit a response, why open them? Even marketers are guilty of the mass inbox delete. Despite this, we still analyze open and click-through rates and wonder what went wrong.

Customers are inundated with emails. Nearly everything you buy online or in a store opts you into email marketing campaigns. Often, consumers end up on a list they were never interested in and certainly don’t care to receive nearly constant communication. In a study by ExactTarget, researchers found that 9 out of 10 subscribers later opt-out of email communication, citing that mailings are too frequent, contain repetitive content or are irrelevant because the consumer didn’t realize they were opting in to begin with.

So, as a marketer, how do you convince someone who has already expressed interest in your communications (whether intentionally or not) to take the next step and actually open the email? The answer seems all too obvious: by creating emails that your customers want to read.

Craft emails containing information that makes the reader’s job easier. It is as simple as that. Create emails that offer a reward, emails that make information easier to locate, or emails that offer some tangible value to your particular audience.