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Online Video for Small Businesses - Can I afford it?
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
It all started with Youtube and Viral marketing. It spread to personal multimedia on websites. It continued with Rovion… For $3,000 you could have a professional nudge on your site bugging all your repeat visitors (but it looks cool). Microsoft’s bought it, and servicemagic has as well. The problem is that it’s really expensive. But, we’re nice people, and we want small business owners to benefit as well.
Want to put video on your site? Here’s a couple of resources:
USA Today’s Steve Strauss Encourages Small Business Owners to have Blogs
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008John Janstch alerted me to an article in the USA Today online that adresses whether business owners should have blogs.
Steve Strauss gives 5 reasons a small business owner should have a blog:
- You help build a sense of community - in other words, you build a relationship with the customer, so they see you as a real person… not just a webpage
- They allow you to plug products
- They help with SEO - I use the blog here solely for SEO (as well as to get new clients - I’ll get to the plug at the end
)
Free Website Design Book from Newfangled.com CEO, Eric Holter
Monday, February 4th, 2008In doing some research for our companies website, I stumbled across an interesting site - www.newfangled.com. They created their own system for designing websites, which looks really intriguing.
As I have gone from merely doing marketing of websites to managing the design of websites,I’ve learnt how many different options there are, and how tough it is to convey something that is still an idea in your head. Eric Holter’s claim is that using the standardized way of designing a website- using wireframes and sitemaps, doesn’t effectively communicate what needs to get completed.
Facebook (Stupidly) Takes the Heat from Moveon, while Yahoo and Ebay laugh to the bank!
Thursday, December 13th, 2007So we all know about the Facebook Debacle with Beacon - and the horrible mistakes stupid 24 year olds make (We really do love you Mark Zuckerburg) it’s just that young kids shouldn’t be running $15 billion dollar businesses.
Moveon.org and the EFF have been decrying the privacy issues. As I’ve stated in a previous post, I think that behavioral targeting is inevitable and coming soon. In fact, I wasn’t happy that Mike Morgan from Tacoda was being apologetic about it.
Is the LA Times Getting Closer to “Getting It”?
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007This is a follow up to my first post on the LA Times’s efforts to go “Web 2.0″, after meeting with Eric Ulken at a blogger’s event.
First off, a little disclaimer… My site is ugly, doesn’t convert, and definitely is not “cool”. So I really should have no right to criticize other companies’ efforts to “get it”. Especially since the LA Time site isn’t to badly designed. It has a pretty minimalist design, and very easy to find links.
A Sad Day - A Legal Decision Puts BroadFirst Out Of Business
Friday, November 16th, 2007Sheri Archidiacono in Sedo’s Newsletter (they don’t have it available online) sais this about “Website Terms and Conditions are Considered a Contract”:
“In the case of Southwest Airlines Co. v. BoardFirst, LLC, a Texas court held that a user of a website was bound by the terms and conditions of that website where the user has actual knowledge of such terms and conditions.
The Plaintiffs, Southwest airlines maintained a first come, first served, open seating policy, where passengers are arranged in groups. The Defendant, Boardfirst.com was an internet company that provided a service to Southwest customers whereby for a fee, a passenger could check in early and BoardFirst would attempt to get the passenger into the first boarding group.
LA Times Getting Social Media? Candid Discussion with Eric Ulken
Monday, November 5th, 2007Today I happened on the Mashable “Top 10 Blogger Events Post“. I noticed that BarCamp is having an event in LA today. Oops, good timing! I figured, what the heck, I’ll check it out.
I came down, and found an interesting setup. The goal is to have a conversation with the crowd instead of having presenter’s merely talk to the crowd. In other words, the focus of the sessions were wherever the participants took it.
The session that I found really valuable was the one from Eric Ulken from latimes.com. He was hosting a presentation on mashups - how layering data together can create a valuable experience for users. Eric identified three parts of a mashup:
Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product…Part 2 - Pay-Per-Call?? The Click Fraud Solution???
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007I was going to do a post on Yahoo’ s smartads press releases, as well as the Atlas’s Research that conveniently came up right beforehand. Hmm… both services not in as much in the SEM field as much as in the…. you got it - banner and rich media advertising… Hmmm correlation?
(Unfortunately, that idea seems to have fallen flat. The sad part is, that although the concept was a good one - someone in PR at Yahoo just doesn’t know how to promote it. It will remain a little gold mine for the marketer that cares.)
Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product…Part 1 - Click Fraud
Sunday, September 30th, 2007In recent times, I’ve noticed two major companies that have put out press releases about “itches” (things that bother advertisers), just to get focus on their products… I don’t have any issues with them doing that - I think it’s a brilliant marketing plan.
1) Find an “itch” - an issue, challenge or market opening
2) Create a solution (under wraps)
3) Scratch the itch (blow the issue, challenge or market opening up as much as possible- but appear unbiase, because you don’t yet have a solution)
4) Rake in the money - become the “authority” on the “issue, challenge or market opening”
In House Agency vs. Outside Agency…
Friday, August 31st, 2007We are currently doing PPC inhouse. Our SEO however, is out of house. Here is something that I’ve been mulling over. What is more valuable - doing as much of the advertising and marketing in-house, or to hire an agency?
Advantages of doing in-house:
1) Accountability - Anything get’s screwed up you bring in your employees in and just give it to them over the head!
2) Increased ROI- Agencies fees are generally pretty expensive. They charge you through the nose. You know you are spending alot more. Contrast that with hiring an employee, many times it’s much cheaper to hire an employee.
RE: Social Media Advertising: The ‘Publisher Is The Consumer’ by Joe Marchesse…
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007Joe Marchesse just posted a beautifully articulated article about “pull advertising” on social networks - and how it necessitates a paradigm shift for marketers.
I believe that he has touched upon a crucial concept that us marketers (yeah, me too. I’m stuck in a company that is thinking 2001) need to understand, and merely applied it to the social media world. With the start of search, the consumer (you and me) are being taught to expect information that is useful to us.
More about Yahoo…
Friday, August 3rd, 2007I saw an interesting article at knowledge at wharton which confirmed some of my beliefs about Yahoo -and their current perception in the eyes of “tech geeks”, Wall Street and the public. One of their main arguments was that Yahoo has to ignore Wall Street and their opinions.
Couldn’t agree more 
However, I think that it is just the opposite. I think that Yahoo has to create a PR campaign about their innovations. They had personalized pages before Google - yet Google’s personal home page was trumpeted alot more. More so, they don’t even pay for the publicity.
Getting Back to the Basics - There’s a right way and a wrong one…
Thursday, July 26th, 2007At work in the past couple of weeks, our battle plan has been changed - to have my boss work on the PPC management, and I would work on expansion. However, some of the expansion things have had their hangups- as they rightfully would. My boss’s new mantra now (his original one - to be honest) is about going back to the basics… Test test test.
The truth is, that that is a great strategy. However, it really goes back to what you are testing for. If you test random things without a plan, you are going nowhere. You start with a vision, then you can kick ass.
BrainTease - What do Personal Branding, Corporate Responsibility and successful businesses have to do with each other??
Thursday, July 5th, 2007What is the common thread that ties Personal Branding, Corporate Responsibility and Successful Business Models together? Yup brainteaser! Go ahead - comment here and tell me about it!
BTW- this blog is about business - so while it’s a bit about ethics, if you can master this, I believe you can build a successful business!
Alright, here goes my connection between all three. You prepared for a rant?
First what is branding from a business perspective? In a (couple of) word(s), branding a business is about creating a “persona” around a business. I strongly advise you to go read think two products ahead by Ben Mack - it’s a book essentially about using branding without the big agency budget (a good thing!).
The Lessons From the Yahoo vs. Google Rivalry…
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007One thing that strikes me so weird is Wall Street’s attitude towards Yahoo. It almost feels like most Yahoo investors that aren’t enamored of it are because “Google is cool” - be like Google. As a savvy person - and one that is savvy in online marketing - I laugh at that.
But this is not something to laugh at. The market’s perception of Yahoo is what will drive it’s future, as the unknowing owners / stockholders will demand from Yahoo to emulate and beat Google at Google’s game. Sad… really.
But hey, I don’t have Yahoo stock - or Google, so I’ll just stay carefree.
6 Steps to Taking Your Marketing Team to Ultimate Creativity…
Monday, July 2nd, 2007This week I was asked to present a marketing plan… Hehehe… I don’t think my boss was ready for this!
Some of the challenges we have been facing (my boss hasn’t realized) is that there is a large disconnect between our sales department and our marketing department… as well as our IT department… (creates alot of politics - god). My boss asked me to create a marketing plan for the team - and this is what I came up with.
CEO’s Who Don’t Understand Search Rant…
Saturday, June 30th, 2007Wow… today was a crazy day. I am the “online marketing specialist”. Typically, I get orders of stuff to do, and I just do them. I don’t get into meetings with the CEO and make decisions. Hey, I’m happy that way, it frees me from responsibility.
Well, today I got invited into a meeting, where our department got chewed. Now, it wasn’t really our department. It was my boss- the VP of marketing, that the CEO was frustrated with.