WHOLE NEW PLAYING FIELD FOR 'VIDEO' SEO

See the slide show and link below to learn more about the intricacies of 'video' SEO.

SES San Jose 2009 - Next Wave in Online Video

View more documents from Mark Robertson.

Click Here to watch video overview.

WHAT DOES YAHOO-MICROSOFT DEAL MEAN FOR SEO?

Turning up on the first page of an organic search result when someone types in your product or brand is pretty much the cost of entry for any substantial e-commerce entity or marketer. For the past decade, that's meant one thing: optimize for Google and maybe tweak a bit for Yahoo and MSN...everything else didn't matter all that much.

In the coming months when Microsoft's' BING takes over Yahoo search infrastructure, there will be a whole new wave of SEO needs from clients if they wish to be ranked high on search engines other than Google. Read more from AdAge

CREATIVE MARKETING APPROACH

Well, with Facebook, Twitter and other social media obligations, I find that I have been neglecting my blog entries. Today however I ran into a creative marketing approach that I knew I needed to share.

Ever go to a hair salon for the first time for a consultation? Well, to save time and resources, a salon in Cambridge, MASS offers free consultations via SKYPE (an online video/audio communications site), which is one of those out-of-the-box type ideas that I like to share with my readers. To read more, click here.

NEW 'OFFICE SUITE' FOR MARKETERS... ADVERTISING

Microsoft has long built enterprise software solutions for myriad industries: retail, health care, sales. But now it has its eye on the advertising industry.

Microsoft and Mediabrands, the media division of Interpublic Group of Cos. that counts Microsoft as a major ad client, are collaborating to build a software system that marketers can use to track everything from search advertising and e-mail newsletters to CRM systems to TV buys in one place. To read more, check out the Ad Age article on the topic.

NINE BALL, NOT A GAME OF POOL BUT RATHER A NASTY VIRUS

If you haven't heard of it yet, you soon will...the Nine Ball virus is making its way through the web infecting 10s of thousands of websites...two of which are ones I manage. Not a happy camper! I've spent hours trying to clean up the mess, just to find out that the two sites are infected again. Don't know how it happened, but I've taken precautions that I would like to pass along.

• Make sure you store sensitive data, i.e. passwords in a password protected document and use extra characters that you'll know to remove when needing the password, i.e. use an "&" symbol at the beginning or end of the password.
• Consider using a password manager like PassPack
• Don't use auto fill features when visiting websites unless using a service that PassPack offers.
• Don't e-mail usernames and passwords in the same e-mail and refer to the first bullet on this list for using extra symbols.

If you're interested in reading more on this subject, I found a good article at eWeek.com.

MOBILE APPS ARE ALL THE RAGE

If you're a wine lover, check out this wine matcher / wine pairing app from a client of mine Nat Decants. The app is for BlackBerry or iPhone. The wine mobile matcher is only $2.99 and is perfect for when you're at a grocery store or restaurant and wondering what wine to buy.

Watch the wine pairing video to see how the app works:

HOW MUCH IS YOUR WEBSITE/BLOG WORTH?

Do you have a website that gets a lot of traffic? Ever wonder what it's worth? Check out DNScoop.com to find out. Just to give you an idea...I have one client who gets about 1200 visits per day...according to DNScoop the site is worth over $85k. Not bad!

BOTTA 'BING!' NEW SEARCH FROM MICROSOFT

Microsoft on Thursday took the wraps off Bing, the rebranded and rebuilt search engine designed to replace Live Search. It's a solid improvement over the previous search product, and it beats Google in important areas. It will help Microsoft gain share in the search business. It's surprisingly competitive with Google.

Bing isn't available to the public yet, but you won't have to wait long. Starting on June 1, some users will get Bing search results from Live Search. On June 3, CNET says Bing will be Microsoft's new default search. Click here to see how it looks.

SOME OF MY LATEST WORK...

Check out some of my latest projects...

• Logo and Website for MM Players Club, a unique way to play private country club golf.
• Website and site optimization work for a beauty salon in Gold Canyon, Joli Salon.
• Website for a indoor golf dome in Chicago, White Pines Golf Dome.
• Website for a great pizza joint in Scottsdale and Phoenix, Humble Pie.
• Registration page and database for "Arts Olympics" event for the Superstition Area Cultural Alliance (SACA).
• Site optimization work for OnSet Marketing Group.
• Website for a decorative concrete supply company in Chicago, BDC Supply

TEN TIPS FOR BUILDING A GOOD E-MAIL LIST

An email campaign is only as good as the list it is sent to. The question from marketers then becomes, “How do I build a great email list?” Read these tips from dmPULSE that can help all email marketers build their most valuable asset; the email list.

A UNIQUE PRODUCT IN AN UN-UNIQUE CATEGORY

Have you heard of Tom's shoes? If you haven't...you will! This utterly simple shoe design is gaining a lot of steam with its unique, altruistic marketing approach. For every shoe they sell, they give a pair away to a person in need.

SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS FROM TOP PROFESSIONALS

The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web.

Read what some of the biggest brands in the business are doing with Social Media and how it can help you. Article by: Social Media Today

T.V. ADVERTISING MADE EASY!

Think you can't afford T.V. advertising or commercial production? Think again. Google has made the process of T.V. commercial production easy and its airtime even easier to purchase. If you're familiar with Keyword or Adword advertising, the new "Google for T.V." is very similar. Purchasing T.V. airtime is now auction based, which means if a station or network has time that is unsold, you can get a bargain. The best part, it's all trackable so you know what's working, and what's not. Check out the brief demo below.

IT'S NOT A BIRD. IT'S NOT A PLANE. IT'S A FLOGO!

What the heck is a "Flogo" you ask? It's a floating logo of course! Flogo has come up with a way of compressing bubbles and helium gas in order to create floating logos for events and other brand awareness campaigns. Check out the video below on a Nintendo campaign.

NEW CAPTCHA METHOD BY GOOGLE TO MINIMISE SPAM

If you're not familiar with the term, "Captcha," you've probably run across one when perusing a website in which there are form fields. A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.

A persistent problem on the Internet is screening out automated computer systems that can be used, for example, to sign up for spam-sending e-mail accounts or post comments designed to improve a site's search results. In comes Google with a new "image-based" Captcha method to help minimise spam and other nefarious issues. Read more from News.com

ONLINE MEETING/CONFERENCE CALL TOOLS...

There are some great inexpensive and often free web apps out there to help you facilitate conference calls and meetings. Here are a few to check out, Free Conference, TalkShoe and GoToMeeting.

FORGET RSS, THIS MIGHT BE A SIMPLER SOLUTION

If you're not quite sure what an RSS feed is, you might not have to learn thanks to Alltop. Alltop is an online magazine rack of popular topics. They update stories every hour. Pick a topic by searching news, name, etc. and they'll deliver it to you 24/7. Check it out and let me know what you think.

INTERESTING TWIST TO DIRECT MAIL...MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE TOO...

So, imagine sending your direct snail-mail piece but rather than using a stamp, you use Zumbox. Zumbox delivers paperless mail online – from street address to street address. What used to only be sent as paper mail can now be sent without the paper. How? Zumbox has created a nationwide paperless postal system with a Zumbox for every street address in the U.S., including yours.

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

This is an interesting article on why Facebook doesn't listen to its customers, and it won't start now. The article has some good lessons for all businesses. Click here to read about it.

GREAT NEW ASP TO PROMOTE YOURSELF IN E-MAIL

Glooq is an interesting new product that allows you to create banner ads and place them into your e-mail in order to promote yourself or product.

GREAT SOCIAL MEDIA BUSINESS SUCCESS STORY

Take a traditional taco truck, make a unique recipe and add a dose of social media marketing and, voila! you have a successful business.

Launched last fall, Kogi Korean BBQ takes the taste of Korean barbecue and melds it with the portability of Mexican tacos and burritos for a whole new category of delectable food.

PLENTY OF GOOD MARKETING IDEAS FOR DOWN ECONOMY...

FedEx came up with a great P/R idea...help the unemployed by offering free resume printing. What a great idea...it shows good will, it gets press coverage, and it's low cost. From a marketing perspective, what's not to love!

If you're interested, click here to see some of the coverage.

"RETARGETING..."WHAT IS IT?

Have you ever noticed during your daily peruse through the Internet that you often see the same company's banner ads over and over again? Well I have, and it was freaking me out—in a good way...from a marketing perspective that is. It's called, "Retargeting" and it's a way of maximising your online ad dollars by targeting individuals who've already visited your site.

Look at it this way...you're in the market for a new pair of hiking boots and you hit the REI website, but then you get distracted and move onto something else. If REI is using a "retargeting" service like, "Fetchback" then for the next week or more you will start seeing advertisements from REI on many of the sites (with ad serving) you visit...some of the ads will be very targeted like promoting "hiking boots," which will prompt your memory that you were in need of a new pair and forgot to finish your purchase.

DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE BY INCREASING BLOG VISIBILITY

From an online marketing perspective, your job is to drive traffic to your site...how do you do this? Well, there are many ways, however we're only going to talk about one here. If you don't currently have a blog, I encourage you to create one and link it up to your site...having extra relevant content about your product or service is very helpful in driving traffic. Blogger and WordPress are the two most popular blog services, both have simple and advanced applications. WordPress has more options and is more scalable than Blogger, but Blogger is very user-friendly for the beginner and they're owned by Google, so your content is indexed quickly. Check out both and decide which is best for your needs.

Once you set up your blog, it's important to get people to read it. Beyond telling all of your friends, colleagues and customers, here are 20 good ways to increase your visibility that I came across.

FACEBOOK HAS 53 MILLION USERS, ARE YOU TAPPING THEM?

Facebook is adding 250k users every day and have over 53m active users. Have you been sitting on the sidelines with respect to social media? Well, here is a great link that will walk you through setting up a Facebook business page step-by-step. Click here.

LINK TO SPECIFIC PART OF A YOUTUBE VIDEO

Ever want to show someone something specific in a YouTube video—and so you tell them exactly what Min./Sec. into the video the information is? Well, if you include the following information at the end of any YouTube link you can make it very simple for them. Here is an example...this is a video with Eric Schmidt (Googgle) at a conference, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t. Now, if I wanted to send you to a specific spot in the video I would add: "=31m08s" (without the "quotes") to the end of the url, which would take the viewer 31 min. and 8 seconds into the clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s

CREATIVE BILLBOARD IDEA

Here is a creative billboard idea for Crowne Plaza in Tokyo.

HOW-TO: GROW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK

We've all heard the expression "it's not what you know, but who you know." In social media, who you know or who knows you, can certainly make all the difference. That's why figuring out who to connect with and taking the time to build relationships with these people is key to leveraging the power of social media. Read this great "how-to" guide by Interactive Insights group to learn more.

NEW METHOD IN OUTDOOR ADVERTISING

A new method to billboard advertising is starting to emerge..."clustering," or "storyboarding." Creating a story through a series of clustered billboards over a short distance can have a big impact on retention and increased ROI. Next time you're looking at investing in outdoor advertising, you might want to consider this "storyboarding" method.

SERIOUS DECLINE IN TRADITIONAL AD SPENDING PREDICTED

Local ad spending forecasted to decline through 2013 according to Tomn Buono, CEO of BIA Advisory Services and reported by Ad Age. According to the report, ad spending was more than $155b last year, by 2013 traditional advertising could drop to $112b.

In contrast, Interactive Media is predicted to continue its rise, from $14b last year to over $32b by 2013. It's no wonder major newspapers around the country are filing for bankruptcy or closing all together.

SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCH: CREATING HUMAN-CENTRIC LENS

Social media is changing many aspects of business from how we talk to our customers to how we listen to the people who make our livelihoods possible. Over the past several years, social media marketing has been elevated to a degree of credibility within public relations, marketing communications and customer service. The information from the raw voices of our customers (consumer generated media) that occurs without a traditional statistical overlay has been slower to be embraced by the marketing research industry. Click here to read more...

THE SHORTEST URL COMPRESSOR POSSIBLE...

You may have heard of TinyURL.com to shorten your web addresses for sites like Twitter, but I've recently discovered the shortest one possible, Is.GD.

KINDLE 2 IS NOW AVAILABLE

Kindle 2 is now available...what does it mean for the publishing industry? If you're not familiar with Kindle, it's a wireless reading device in which you can purchase books, magazines and newspapers and read at your leisure with now bulk to lug. It's possible Kindle could do what MP3 players/I-Pod did for music, but only time will tell. From a marketing perspective, I'm curious as to what types of advertising opportunities there will be and who will manage it. If you'd like to learn more from a users perspective, check out the video below.

'SEARCH' IS EVOLVING...GETTING SMARTER

Over the past decade Starbucks has help evolve the coffee business and opened the doors for many Mom & Pop type places to thrive. Today, the likes of Google and Yahoo are doing the same with 'search.'

The days of people typing a couple of words into a search box and hoping for the best are numbered. Companies big and small are moving things forward, experimenting with searches based on complex sentences, images and audio, mashing up mobile search with location data, and aiming to make results more useful than the traditional list of blue links.

One approach is to show results in a more visual style. Viewzi, for example, has a number of options, including viewing results from Flickr as a photo thumbnail cloud; viewing thumbnails of web pages found by Google, Ask, Yahoo and Live Search on one page; and viewing news results from Google News in the style of a newspaper front page. Seachme, also presents its results as a series of web screenshots, mimicking the iTunes Cover Flow look.

Click here to read a comprehensive article by TechRadar.com on the evolution of search.

SITE THAT HELPS MEDIA BUYERS FIND SELLERS

Alternative advertising approaches appear frequently, including the efforts of Curb and Brand Girl. Aiming to make it easier for brands to find such opportunities, DOmedia is an online marketplace and community designed specifically to support the alternative advertising industry.

DOmedia bills itself as a sort of matchmaking service for media buyers and media sellers. Listed in its media database, for example, are opportunities to advertise on college student notebooks, on phone kiosks, on golf carts and in restrooms. Media buyers can search through the listings on DOmedia for opportunities they like—searching by geography, advertising category or venue, for example—using its campaign management tools to save, share and organize the ones they identify. Media sellers, meanwhile, can use the site to promote their inventory. Finally, the online DOmedia library provides a glossary of terms, new technology spotlight and DMA rankings, among other information.

As traditional advertising continues to struggle, alternative approaches will be sure to expand. No shortage of opportunities making all the right connections.

SOCIAL MEDIA NUMBERS SKYROCKET

The usage of social media networks continues to escalate and now there is a new king...Facebook! Facebook eclipses News Corps' MySpace for the #1 spot with over 68 million unique visits, well ahead of MySpace's 58 million. A relative newcomer, Twitter, surges all the way to the #3 spot. LinkedIN also moves up quite a few spots to #5 as the most popular social media networks. To see the complete list, click here.

"CLICKTALE" IS A POWERFUL ANALYTICS APP

Just ran across a fairly new and interesting analytics software app for tracking blog and website traffic that's pretty powerful. ClickTale actually creates movies of your visitors' actions so you can see exactly what they are seeing and doing on your site. This tracking information could have a HUGE impact on your bottom line! To learn more, read this article by Venture Beat or watch the demo below.

DELIVER YOUR BRAND IN NATURAL MEDIUMS

CURB...an out-of-the-box agency dedicated to helping their clients deliver brands and messages using natural mediums....like sidewalks, grass, and even snow has some pretty cool ideas.

GOOGLE EXPERIMENT COULD SPARK SEO CHANGE

Preferred Sites is a new experimental feature for Google Search that lets you personalize the results by adding a list of sites you want to appear more often when you search. Read More from Google.

GREAT COMMERCIAL FOR CENTRUM SILVER

I heard this commercial was banned from prime time...great spot!

WHAT TO MAKE FOR DINNER...

Okay, here's a good idea...You get home from work late and there isn't much in the way of food in the fridge or cupboard...what to do? Well, you can type in what ingredients you do have into a website called Not Beans Again and they will come up with a recipe for ya.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA ELECTED A PRESIDENT

If it were not for the Obama campaigns' astute understanding of online marketing, it's very possible we'd have someone else in the White House right now. Read More or download Obama's Social Media Toolkit

BLACKBERRY (STORM) VS. I-PHONE

Apple has been making up some serious ground on Blackberry of late, however with the new "Storm" coming out and over 1 million units sold already...does the I-Phone need to re-invent itself to continue making up ground? ZDNet breaks down the differences between the two phones in this thoughtful article...the authors decision on which is better may have come down to Verizon over AT&T.

TALK ABOUT MAKING IT EASIER FOR YOUR CUSTOMER TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT

Subway restaurants has just launched a new way of ordering their product...can you say "SMS text message?" Just go to their www.SubwayNow.com website via your web-enabled phone and place your order, it will be ready for you to pick up. Certainly beats waiting in line!

IMPACT SOCIAL MEDIA IS HAVING THE NEWS

Last night I was watching the news and saw a still image of a man who opened the back door of a plane and jumped out while it was taxiing to the gate. Below the image it said, "courtesy of Amanda Vega," a woman that I know...well, not really, but I follow her on Twitter. Amanda just happened to be on the same plane and snapped a few pics with her I-Phone, then sent to various news stations within minutes. Amazing how social media is having an impact on our news and information. Read the story on Amanda's Blog.

TOUCH SCREEN COMPUTERS COULD EFFECT ADVERTISING

N-Trig, an Israeli company that focuses on capacitive touch received $28m in funding from Microsoft today. Microsoft I'm sure is trying to figure out the next "big thing" in online advertising. Touch screens could revolutionise the way people interact and react with their computers...with advertising. More to come as I ponder and prognosticate the subject.

SHOULD I SWITCH TO A MAC?

This is not my usual marketing post, but thought it was a worthwhile article for those who are wondering if they should make the switch to MAC...I have been contemplating this subject for over a year as my PC laptop continues to frustrate me. Rafe Needleman of CNET has chronicled he and his wife's transitional journey from PC to MAC. Read, "Switcher's lament: The case against Mac" if you too have pondered the question, you may find your answers.