Here are more acronyms to add to parts 1 and 2.

PPC - Pay Per Click

PPC is one of the three main models of paid online advertisement. In the PPC model you pay the site or service hosting your ad every time someone follows a link placed in the ad. This means that universally appealing teaser ads are actually a bad idea as you will attract clicks from people who will never convert to sales or participants. On the other hand, an add that’s been well tailored to your service will actually cover you through a few false starts when selecting a target audience, as low traffic means low costs.

The other major models are Pay for Term, and PPI (which will be covered next week).

ROI - Return on Investment

Maintaining an online presence always requires an investment of money, time, or both. This raises the inevitable question of, “is it worth it.” Naturally, I would say yes, but ultimately you will need to make this determination yourself based on how much of a return you’re getting on your investment. However, in order to determine your ROI, you will need objective measures. Google Analytics is a great start, but unless you run an e-commerce site, you will still need a way to determine who converts into a sale, how much loyalty your customers have, and whether or not your customer base is expanding.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing

More than 1.3 trillion searches are performed on Google every year, with still more on other services like Yahoo!, Bing, and Alta Vista. SEM takes the pages from these sites and turns them into billboards for your online advertisements. Search Engine Marketing methods include PPC advertising (above), SEO (see below), and the purchase of featured listings.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

SEO describes several different methods to improve the placement and visibility of your unpaid search listings (also known as your “organic” listings). Some of these methods can be executed on your own site, such as giving each page a distinct and accurate description. Others require you to interact with other sites on the web in order to gather inbound links from respected locations. At one time you could get by with just one or the other, but now it is essential to use a combination of both approaches combined with a system of evaluation so that you can tell what alterations actually improve your site performance.

SMO - Social Media Optimization

Like SEO, SMO is a process used to get the best out of online marketing efforts, in this case social media hubs such as Flickr, YouTube, or Facebook. Measures in SMO often include things like follower counts, influence (number of people who follow you divided by the number you follow), and quality of CGM, as well as more traditional measures of advertising campaign success.