Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

The Technorati Phenomenon

Here's an interesting article with David Sifry, CEO of Technorati, which discusses the technology behind the website and its plans to compete with bigshots like Google.

Tracking the net (Source: Red Herring)

In the words of the company themselves, "Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere — the world of weblogs." In fact the website is able to track what is being said on the web within minutes of content being published. Test it out: try and find this article on the site!

Here are some stats from the Technorati site: "Today, Technorati tracks over three million weblogs* up from 100,000 two years ago. The Pew Internet study estimates that about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. A new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds, which means there are about 15,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about 275,000 posts daily, or about 10,800 blog updates an hour."

* 4.8 million latest figure.

Google takes Adsense Publisher to Court

When I first mention Google Adsense, or Overture for that matter, to my clients practically every one says that it would be a neat idea to click on their competitor's Adwords to inflict some sort of financial damage. Guess what? Google are wise to it and just to reinforce this message you may be interested in reading an article from Clickz about how they intend to take one of their publishers to court - Google Sues AdSense Publisher for Click Fraud. Google AdSense Publishers are people who place Google Adwords on their site and gain a few cents when someone clicks on the ad. Well, in this case, it looks like a company employed people (50 of them!!) to click on adverts on their site to drive up their Google Adwords revenue.

Using Email to Target Mothers

Just came across an interesting article from Wonderbranding. In it Michele Miller discusses some of the findings from eMarketing.com about targeting mothers through eMail. Here are some of the findings:

• 67% of mothers say they check their email 3 or more times a day

• 66% of mothers spend more money with companies that send them useful and relevant e-mail messages

• 71% think e-mail messages influence their buying decisions

• 67% of mothers go online to do product research and 55% look for coupons or discounts online

I remember when my wife was pregnant (around 3 years ago) she signed up to a few mother and toddler Web sites. Some of them were able to develop on-line relationships by sending us meaningful information, such as how our baby was developing on a given week and what changes my wife might expect. In addition, she signed up for coupons for a wide range of products, both for herself and the baby - I recall Huggies Club being one. I think that it is all about developing meaningful, valued relationships where women perceive and experience tangible benefits. The period before birth through to maternity offer companies a great opportunity to put the building blocks in place for  the establishment of a long-lasting relationship. Not sure how many of them can build on this, though.

Michelle ends with some interesting questions: “Are you utilizing your online relationship with female consumers?  Are you speaking to their needs... offering real value other than just an announcement of your latest sale?  When they look at your email, do they envision a friend on the other end... or just another sales pitch?”

Interesting Links
Mother Bliss
iVillage

Add URL to new MSN Search Engine

As you may be aware MSN launched its new look Beta Search Engine last week. Should you wish to find out if your site is listed on the search engine or to submit your site, check out the Getting your site indexed on MSN Search page of MSN.com.

Search Engine Secrets (and keeping them so)

Do Search Engine Marketers keep the best secrets of Search Engine Marketing to themsleves and away from forums?

The Search Engine Watch blog has picked up on this interesting theme in an article entitled Keeping SEO Secrets. The article is influenced by another written on Threadwatch (The Dirty Little Secrets of SEO & How Information Travels), where the author claims he asked someone who had posted to a forum asking about whether a certain technique worked to 'remove his post in exchange for finding out how that technique actually worked'. Danny Sullivan gives his opinion on the subject and comes up with his own advice for search engine marketers. Two very interesting and thought provoking articles.

Firefox - a viral marketing phenomena

In an article entitled Crazy like a Firefox, Rebecca Lieb says that the Firefox web browser realy is, "a kick-ass browser. It's light, stable, and almost infinitely customizable." Incidentally, it's free and its beta was only launched on Tuesday (9th November). Firefox also appears to be the most successful viral marketing campaign ever on the Internet, generating since Tuesday 1 million downloads per day!!; got 100,000 websites to display banners and buttons and, through the Firefox community raised $250,000 to get an full-page advert in the New York Times.

Looking on the Spread Firefox website I saw some of the tools that they are using to generate such publicity:

Email Signature
Get Firefox!

Buttons

Ad Banners

In order to build community with college students, Firefox decided to "put out a call for a volunteer to lead a massive grassroots marketing effort targeted at college students." After an overwhelming amount of applications they decided to appoint 6 people.

Typepad to offer sponsored links through Kanoodle

Six Apart, the people who developed Typepad (which Marketing Tom uses), have signed an agreement with Kanoodle a provider of sponsored listings for search advertising. The agreement means that Typepad subscribers will, from the first quarter of 2005, easily be able to add Kanoodle's sponsored links to their sites. More information can be found on the Kanoodle site: Kanoodle and Six Apart to Offer First Integrated Weblog Publishing and Monetization Service

Microsoft to launch its new Search Engine

It looks like Microsoft's eagerly awaited Search Engine will be launched on the 11th November. With revenues from paid search advertising totalling $5 billion a year, Microsoft is going to try and dent the market shares of the 2 main players, Google and Yahoo. Industry experts, however, believe that it will be at least 2 years before they can make any inroads on Google. Though nobody is really sure what it will look like "a technical preview seen by Times Online appeared to have been based on the clean lines of Google, rather than the ad-and-offer-heavy Yahoo site."

Microsoft squares up to Google (Times Online)
At Last, a Microsoft Search Tool (New York Times)

Google Adwords Guidelines

Here's an interesting article on Google Adwords from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch. Entitled Google Lays Out Content Guidelines, it discusses Google's decision to publish its content policy. The company has been much criticised in the past for not letting advertisers know the reasons why their ads have been rejected. This will hopefully answer the critics. You can find Google's content policy on their website: Content Policy and you may be interested in Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines, too.

MP comes up with great Marketing idea

After allegations of how much British MP's claim in expenses, one Labour MP has offered £5 to any constituent who can prove he is bad value for money. David Taylor, MP for North West Leicestershire, calculated that his £123,042 expenses worked out at £5 per household. As David Taylor says: "Tell me why so I can try and alter the way I work and fit in more closely with the people of North West Leicestershire if necessary."

This story reminded me of something I heard from Tom Peters or Seth Godin, or some other management guru about focusing not so much on your happy clients (who will only tell you things you already know about your prodduct or service) but the discontented ones. If you can work out why they're unhappy, then you can create a much stronger product offering. Incidentally, David Taylor has an 18% majority - initiatives like this one are probably why.

Read more on the BBC site: MP's good value cash back promise

Content, Keywords and Blogs

Here's an interesting article from Blog Business World about the use of keywords and content on blogs: Links and content: Blogs need both. Wayne Hurlbert reckons that Content is King but you shouldn't forget that Links are Queen. Though most issues have been covered on Marketing Tom, its always worth reminding ourselves of some of the key elements of Search Engine Marketing. Here are Wayne's observations:

[On Linking] "For off page linking benefit, it’s considered good practice to use theme related anchor text to lead to your blog. The anchor text should be some targeted keywords, specifically directed to the page being optimized."

[On Content] "If possible, fit your chosen search terms into your blog’s title, description, title tags, and URL. After that, place them in the headlines of your articles, and highly positioned on the page, whenever you are able. When you write your content, be sure to use your targeted keyword(s) on your pages. In longer articles, you can slip them in as phrases two or three times. The search engine will calculate them to be important search terms for your search. As a result, your blog should rank much higher for those words."

How to excite people with a Four-letter Word!

Robert Scoble, one of the most profilic bloggers on the Web and a Microsoft blogger to boot, offers some thoughts on blogging on Microsoft's Business Solutions section. Here are the questions that they put to him in an article entitled, The Four-Letter Word That Can Get People Excited About Your Products:

What is a blog, and how can it help companies promote products?
What are the practical advantages of a blog from the customers' point of view?
Why is blogging becoming so popular?
What are the dangers of blogging from the company's point of view?
What makes a blog work from a company's point of view?

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