Online Marketing Blog

While checking out the referral sources for our blog marketing tools, I came across some nifty RSS sites and resources:

• Phil Bradley - “I want to” blog for Clever things with RSS. Phil was recently named a Search Engine Watch contributor, congrats Phil!

• Peter Scott’s RSS Compendium. Excellent and huge list of RSS tools, information and helper apps.

• Create social bookmark links for blogs or web pages from Claus Schmidt - not too much unlike the TopRank Social Bookmark Creator

• Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: Drupal module for RSS Buttons based on TwisterMC’s TopRank RSS Button Maker

Yes dear friends, I’ve said it. Paid search can be a pain in the rear. But no worries, search engine marketing guru Andrew Goodman of Traffick and Page Zero Media promises to shed some light on the subject in conjunction with a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) seminar next week.

Goodman’s presentation, “IT’S NOT JUST YOU: PAY-PER-CLICK CAN BE A REAL BEAST” will cover examples of Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing challenges, SEM relations, click fraud, CPOs vs. market share growth, data privacy, auctions and more.

Piers Fawkes from PSFK sent me a heads up on his latest channel, Marktd which is a library of marketing articles weighted in importance by users. It works like digg or del.icio.us where users submit articles and others vote on them. Articles are displayed as “New”, “Latest” or “Top” based on votes. The categories range from BtoB to Word of Mouth with some Public Relations in between. But nothing about search marketing. Perhaps that’s a category that should be added?

Submit your marketing stories to Marktd.com

Wow, that was fast. I received my Google Spreadsheets invite about 20 minutes ago and I’ve been toying around with it for just a few min. The place where I am right now has spotty internet access, but I’ve been able to create a few sample spreadsheets and I must say, so far Google Spreadsheets rocks.

Will it replace Microsoft Excel? Maybe not, but there will certainly be a very large audience checking it out. I would be more than happy to say bye bye to Office upgrade fees and say hello to web based collaboration.

Yahoo SearchBlog has announced the update of the Yahoo MyWeb service. The MyWeb blog also offers feature details including:

• Top Tags and Interesting Today
• Finding Friends
• Searching
• Export

Yahoo continues to push further into the realm of “social search” and the implications for search marketing is significant.¬† The editorial relevancy that comes with the links as well as tags from the web at large promises to make searching a much different experience than it is now. Hopefully quality is one of those characteristics. But how will search marketers change what they do to help clients take advantage of the changing nature of search relevancy?

Google Spreadsheets is to launch as part of Google Labs on Tuesday according to CNET. At the time of this writing, there is a tour of features you can take over at the Google Spreadsheets sneak peek site which breaks down the features into: Creating, Sharing and Storing.

The recent purchase of Writely, a web based document editing service offering the benefits and features of MS Word caused quite a bit of speculation about Google’s intentions at going after Microsoft Office users.

In about two weeks the DM Days conference will be held in New York June 20-22 at the Jacob K. Javits convention center. The theme of this event is “Managing your message the customer is in control”. I will be speaking on a panel on search marketing that includes everything from SEO to paid search and online PR called “Search Engine Marketing: Basics and Beyond“.

I’ve seen Jim Boykin call these cat posts, so here’s a bit of a “cat post” from me.

This weekend I went to North Dakota for the funeral of my 91 year old Grandfather. He was quite a character and a story teller. Also a bit ornery. Think of a combination of Albert Finney in Tim Burton’s movie, “Big Fish” and Archie Bunker. For some reason, he rarely ever revealed his ornery side to me - just the stories.

ClickTracks offering a $1000 credit towards ClickTracks Pro, JDC or Agency edition for Google Class Action Lawsuit Members

MSN AdCenter tools - excellent rundown by Aaron Wall

A new and improved Yahoo Video launches

WebAward competition entry deadline is extended

ClickZ.com Hosts First ClickZ Online Video Advertising Forum

3rd Annual Web Analytics Forum, June 26-28, 2006 - Register