Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Yahoo!'s new Web 2.0 Tool

If you're looking for a Web 2.0 tools that can help give your product, service, company, blog or whatever some extra legs, you may want to take a look at Yahoo! Buzz. Following in the same vain as Digg it allows individuals to become editors and select the articles that they would like to appear on the Yahoo! home page. According to Yahoo! this is the way the system works:

The buzz can be about anything - a great story on a major news site, an extraordinary bit from an obscure site, an intriguing video, or a fantastic blog that shouldn't be missed.
Instead of editors, people like you determine the top-rated stories.

How does Buzz work?
A story is ranked based on its Buzz Score. The score is derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.
Stories with the highest Buzz Scores may be published on the Yahoo! home page - you can impact what millions will see on Yahoo!

It's too early to say how this will develop but Yahoo! does tend to buy/develop some good Web 2.0 companies: Yahoo! Answers, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Upcoming. I have started to see some Yahoo! "Buzz Up" buttons on blogs I read - Guy Kawasaki is a case in point.

Shpigler On How Yahoo! Should Deal With Microsoft

I just came across this extremely funny video - of Israel's Shpigler the Shark - from the Guardian. He offers some advice to Jerry Yang on how to negotiate with Microsoft. Here's a sample:

"Tell him: 'You have other options, go and buy a country ... let's see you monetise Liberia'". And on getting the biggest price - "negotiate each part separately ... tell him: 'I will give you Flickr for $2bn, in the end give him Yahoo Mail for $40bn and he will kiss you lips."

Facebook - Some Business Applications

I was at the Technology for Marketing show earlier this week and whilst a number of the presentations were quite forgettable, I must say I enjoyed the presentations by Matthew Banks of Oracle, Dan Cobley of Google and Blake Chandlee of Facebook.

Let me just focus on one of them - Facebook. Blake Chandlee offered people a glimpse of some of the tools that Facebook can offer clients. These included Facebook Polls which gives businesses the ability to set up a poll in next to no time and to aim these polls at their target markets. Blake created an ad for a targeted group in London and had the results delivered in around 10 minutes. He managed to blow $500 and get 500 people surveyed in that time - admittedly, he had Facebook credits!

The other Facebook business application that he demonstrated was Facebook Social Ads, which allow businesses to target ads according to country, city, sex, age, education status and even company. The interesting thing is that as you refine the criteria (age, city, etc) Facebook updates to let you know how many people would potentially be able to view the ad. Obviously, the more refining you do, the fewer the Facebook prospects become but it is still a very neat application for trying to hit the right markets.

Though many businesses are using social ads as a way of getting Facebook traffic to their site, some companies are even setting up their own Facebook Pages. According to Facebook Developer:

Facebook Pages are intended to be profiles that represent individual businesses, a concept familiar to MySpace users. Creating a Facebook Page is a simple process, much like editing one’s personal profile.

Back in November it was reckoned that 100,000 businesses had already signed up for Facebook pages and many of them were household names. When Blake Chandlee says that some 250,000 people mention Coca Cola on their Facebook profiles, it does seem to make sense for the big names to start creating pages and adding "fans" to their profiles.

So, if you're tired of Google AdWords or are just looking at more ways to get to your target market, head off over to Facebook and check out their business offerings.

Digital Media and Teaching - Some Fascinating Insights

Whilst doing some work on Wikis and social media for a workshop I'm delivering shortly, I came across this fascinating and truly, thought-provoking video. Here's the blurb which goes with it:

Since most of today's students can appropriately be labeled as "Digital Learners", why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices? This presentation was created in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching.

I hope you enjoy it!

Citizen Marketing for the Democrats

Have you heard the story of how this singer

was so inspired by a speech by this politician

that he wrote a song

which generated millions of page views on Google.