Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Search Engine Strategies New York

I know it's late but some people may be interested in popping along to the Search Engine Strategies New York event which opens on Monday 28th, February. The event is organised by Danny Sullivan, the leading search engine authority, and looks like it will be the biggest event to date - 1,300 conference attendees have so far signed up, with over 100 exhibitors. On his blog he says that Jerry Yang, Yahoo! co-founder will be joining him for a keynote speech, whilst top names from the big search engines will all be there. If you can't make it, try out the Search Engine Watch SEM Related Organizations & Event forum where event details will be posted.

Blogs El Mundo Style

I was looking through the on-line site of Spanish newspaper El Mundo today, when my eye fell upon the word “blogs”. On clicking one of the links, El Descodificador, I was taken to strange looking blog format. It would appear that El Mundo’s take on blogs is a list of (undated) articles that comprise four lines of introductory text, followed by a link to “read more”.

However, the really strange thing is that though each of these articles allows you to leave a comment, the comments are actually linked to phpBB bulletin board – yes, a bulletin board to leave your thoughts! I can’t understand why El Mundo, which has one of the best (and free) on-line newspapers on the Web, would have taken such a step. Please, let me know your thoughts.

Blogger Quits Job to Become a Full-time Blogger!

I came across an interesting article today about a blogger, Jason Kottke, who has decided to quit his full-time job to become a full-time blogger. In order to fund his 'new venture' Jason is inviting viewers to his site to contribute $30 a year, or $2.50 a month. As Jason puts it,

"For you, $2.50 is a coffee in the morning, a magazine at the newsstand, or a beer at the pub but in the aggregate, it will help me immensely."

His idea is to:

"make about 1/3 to 1/2 of my former yearly salary to support my efforts here for a year. I have no idea whether this goal is even remotely achievable"

Judging by his "micropatrons" list (those who contribute), things aren't going too badly. He has already got 200-odd people to contribute towards his fund - though it's not clear how much they have given. I should point out that in order to read the blog, you won't have to make a contribution. Jason says that the content of the blog won't change - he pretty much writes about everything - though he will now have more time to get involved in creative projects and get out to interesting events.

Quite a lot of what he writes will resonate with bloggers, namely the time that blogging can take up and how it can effect your family and social life:

"The site was getting out of hand and wasn't fun anymore. It was taking me away from my professional responsibilities, my social life, and my relationship with my girlfriend. There was no room in my life for it anymore."

Well, I wish him all the best and must start looking at my own "Contribution" scheme!

Robert Scoble, Blogging and the Fall of PR as we Know it (or not)

The Economist has a great article on Robert Scoble - Chief Humanising Officer - the highest profile blogger on the web and Microsoft employee, to boot.

In a nutshell:
Robert Scoble started out as a blogger for NEC. He is now an employee of Microsoft. His blogging profile landed him the job of Microsoft’s “Technical Evangelist”. What does the job consist of? Mainly blogging!

Now, isn’t that cool!

His weblog, Scobleizer, is one of the most widely read blogs on the Internet. He discusses Microsoft, competitor products, his family and many other things that come into his mind. It's all to do with putting things into context - if you know about the man, you'll know where he's coming from.

However, Robert Scoble has managed to succeed where PR types have failed before. As the Economist states,

“he has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world, and especially to the independent software developers that are his core audience.”

Scoble previously worked for NEC where his technical support skills, delivered through his blog, became a must-read. Microsoft heard of this and thought that they could do with Robert Scoble’s evangelical skills. The Economist discusses for the most part the impact that blogging is having on traditional PR and how the threat of litigation could put a halt to the some of the key tenets of blogging: namely, its honesty and immediacy.   

Original Source
If it's in the Economist it must be true (Marketing Playbook)

Japanese Search Engine Relationship Chart

Having seen the number of visitors from Japan to this blog, I thought my Japanese visitors may be interested to hear about the Japanese Search Engine Relationship Chart and find out how inter-related some of the engines are. If you're getting similar results from different engines, here's why.

How to Turn Vague Attributes into Compelling Copy

Copy is one of the key elements in turning visitors to your site into buyers. It also makes a hell of a lot of sense from a search engine perspective. Jonathan Kranz, in an article in Marketing Profs - Three Ways to Turn Vague Attributes Into Compelling Copy  - talks about how big attributes have little credibility and how they end up diluting your message. He tells people to focus on the following 3 techniques for "transforming vague attributes into compelling copy":

1. Look for the "objective correlative" (Read the article for more on this!)
2. Learn from your customers
"Sometimes they send letters, sometimes you solicit their endorsements. Sometimes you find their comments buried in the back pages of an otherwise tedious and misleading market research report under the rubric "unprompted remarks." Mine this material, because nothing you can say for yourself (or for your client) is as valuable as what real customers have to say about you."
3. Speak from the attribute
"Truly smart people don't go around telling other people they're smart; otherwise, we'd assume they were idiots. Instead, they do and say things that reflect their intelligence—and by doing so, inspire respect."

The Rise and Rise of Firefox

There's a great story in the latest edition of Wired, entitled The Firefox Explosion, about the spread of Firefox. It discusses the role of the 2 main men behind Firefox, Blake Ross, "an angular, hyperkinetic 19-year-old Stanford sophomore with spiky black hair" and Ben Goodger, "a stout, soft-spoken 24-year-old New Zealander." Ross, it appears, was fixing bugs for Netscape at the age of 14 and then decided to start a splinter group. When Ross went to college Goodger took over and Firefox ended up being released in late 2004.

To date there have been 25,241,830 Downloads. In 99 days!!

The article also talks about how one user, Rob Davis, fed up with Internet Explorer and enamoured with Firefox instigated a campaign to raise enough money to post an ad in the New York Times; he did, by getting 10,000 fans to donate $25. A large portion of the article is obviously taken up by the effect that Firefox's success has had on Microsoft's Internet Explorer. And boy, is it having an effect.

Related Article
Firefox - a viral marketing phenomena

Launch of Google Toolbar 3 (beta)

Looks like Google is launching a new beta version of its popular toolbar - this one is called Google Toolbar 3, obviously! On John Battelle's Searchblog he says that Google Product Chief, Marissa Mayer, told him that the new release had three main features:

1. SpellChecker. This feature moves Google's "Did you mean" concept from search results to the toolbar. For any web form (ie Hotmail, or any web-based input) you can now get spell checking courtesy Google's algorithms. Cool.

2. AutoLink.The Toolbar will not automatically make US addresses appearing on web pages into URLs which are linked to Google Maps. Again, cool.

3. WordTranslator. This nifty feature translates any English word on a page into any of 8 other languages. Mayer said this would be a sought after feature for international users who use English as a second language.

6 Great Web Tools that Make Blogging Easier

Send a CV, not a Red Letter, to Rachel Elnaugh at the Dragon's Den!

Over the last couple of months the BBC has aired a TV series called the Dragon's Den, where would-be entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of 5 successful business people in the hope of getting some investment. One of the panelists was Rachel Elnaugh, a businesswoman who founded the successful company Red Letter Days 15 years ago and which is now a £25 million business.

Well, it seems that Red Letter Days is looking to recruit some Strategic Development Managers and is cleverly using Rachel Elnaugh's increased media profile to advertise these positions. Here is a taste of the adverts that were placed in last week's Guardian:

If you've been lured into the Dragon's Den, BBC2's new 'business start up' show, you'll have seen me warm to some great ideas - and also singe a few misplaced egos. Now it's your opportunity to face me and pitch your most valuable product - yourself.

This time my den is Red Letter Days, the company I founded, which is now a £25 million business and the UK's leading 'experience' brand.

This fun advert ends with the invitation:

So if you've got a burning ambition and think you can charm a dragon, I want to hear from you.

If you'd like to enter the Dragon's Den, go visit the Guardian website (before 18th February).

How to Use Case Studies Properly

Website case studies are such a good way to give visitors, and potential customers, the chance to see how your business solutions have made a difference to your clients.

However, more often than not corporate sites will list down their products, services, data specifications and FAQ's but forget to tell the story from the perspective of their most important asset, the client. A good case study should achieve the following broad  objectives:

1. It should outline what the client company does.
2. It should discuss the role that your product/service played and
3. It should identify the benefits that have arisen from its use.

The case studies section for the project management tool, Basecamp (see image), ticks all the right boxes in this respect. Visitors to the site can see view how a cross-section of their clients have used the product - they invited them to answer a questionnaire about the product. The case studies, which are easy and interesting to read, also throw up some ideas for use of the tool that people may not have thought about, too. Simple, yet so effective.

Gawker Media's Nick Denton on Blogging

Nick Denton heads up Gawker Media, publishers of some of the highest profile blogs on the Internet: Gawker, Gizmodo and now Lifehacker (sponsored by Sony), which was discussed in a previous article. In a video interview, which can be seen on iMediaConnection, he discusses how he got into blogs, the role of PR and Marketing in relation to blogs and the future of blogging. Interesting stuff!
Look for the iMedia Video link and select Nick Denton from the dropdown list.

A Guide to Corporate Blogging

Robert Scoble is one of the most famous, and most linked to, bloggers on the Web. Last year he wrote a manifesto for the website ChangeThis, with the title The Corporate
Weblog Manifesto (free to download), where he gives his thoughts on what makes a good corporate weblog. The manifesto offers 20 practical tips for developing a Corporate Weblog, here are 3 of them:

1. Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.
2. Post fast on good news or bad.
Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it — before the second or third site does — and answer its claims as best you can. .....
12. Never change the URL of your weblog.
I've done it once and I lost much of my readership and it took several months to build  up the same reader patterns and trust.

Related Articles

10 Rules for Corporate Blogs and Wikis
2005: Year Of The Corporate Blog
CoporateBlogging.Info

Will a Paid Inclusion Program Boost my Ranking in the Organic Search Listings?

This is Jupiter Research's take on it:

Will a paid inclusion program boost my ranking in the organic search listings?

Sony to Sponsor Blog to the Tune of $75,000

Here's an interesting story that I picked up, via B.L. Ochman's website, about Sony's sponsorship of a new web log called Lifehacker.com. The article, entitled Sony Pays $25,000 a Month for Gawker Blog, says that the electronics firm is going to pay $75,000 over 3 months for the privilege. In order to view the article you will need to sign up (for free registration).

Register, it's Free!

How often have you gone to a website, been invited to sign up and then found that you would have to pay subscription?  Having been directed to the AdAge website from a business blog, it was refreshing  to see straight away that subscription was free (though for premium articles you do have to pay).

Bridging the Gap Between PR and Search Marketing

When speaking to clients about Web content, I always try to make a distinction between what comes out of a company brochure and the content that appears on a company's website. Very often the way that companies present information about themselves and their products in an offline context, is different to an online one. In most cases the target audience is already receptive, and have made a decision to listen to you, be it through a brochure, an advert, TV or through PR. This allows you to put as much spin and shine on the message as you want. Search Engines are different. They don't understand spin, they work on keywords.

That is why an article, entitled PR & Search Marketing: 5 Steps to Get More Press Attention by Using No-Cost Search Optimization, in Marketing Sherpa caught my attention. It starts off with this:

"The PR person's highest goal has always been to get a mention on the cover, above the fold, of the Wall Street Journal. But the most powerful place you can be on the planet is on the front page of any search engine. That's the new cover page."

The quote comes from an Internet Marketing and PR firm which believes that keywords should be at the heart of all PR campaigns. The article has some good tips for getting PR firms to use keywords at every level of their campaigns. Here's an extract from Step 1 - Create a list of Keywords:

"A keyword can be a single word you'd like to be most optimized for, or several words. It should be a term a potential customer or member of the media would typically use when searching for products or services like yours. So, it's not your tagline (how many people search for companies like General Electric using the term "imagination at work"?) It's also not a buzzword that no one outside of your management team and maybe a few analysts use."

The article is FREE to download for around 10 days but will then be available for purchase (I think the cost is about $5).

Technology for Marketing Conference

Next week the Technology for Marketing Conference will be held in London's Olympia on the 8th and 9th (February). They bill themselves as:

UK's premier event dedicated to helping marketing, customer service and sales professionals implement technology solutions to optimise their marketing strategies and campaigns.

There looks like there will be quite a few Internet Marketing exhibitors there - Google will be holding its 'Google University' to let novices, and more advanced users, into the secrets of Google AdWords. Cheetahmail, Webtrends and Vodfone will be participating in seminars in the Email, Mobile and Web Marketing seminar theatre, whilst there is a good cross-section of companies represented on the stands.

E-Mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy from Peppers and Rogers

I've just downloaded an interesting pdf from the Right Now website, entitled E-Mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy (you need to sign up to receive it). Written by the Peppers and Rogers Group, the management consulting firm, it offers a guide to High Impact E-mail Marketing and according to the marketing blurb offers the following:

E-mail Marketing as a Relationship Strategy is a guide for combining leading customer relationship strategies with the best practices within e-mail marketing. It begins with a look at the modern e-mail marketing landscape and an examination of its sharpest challenges.  This is followed by "Four Steps to High Impact E-mail Marketing," designed to help decision makers surpass the challenges and achieve success. Throughout the report are examples of best-in-class e-mail marketing approaches, including a case study from Skechers USA, Inc.

The Resource Centre of this site also offers some other interesting White Papers.