Online Marketing Blog

On my flight from Minneapolis to Vegas today I picked up a copy of Fortune Magazine, which had and the founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace on the cover. The article, “MySpace Cowboys” was pretty good describing the founding of the company as well as the acquisition by News Corp.

With an acquisition price of $580 million, Tom and Chris are still singing the “we’ll keep working as long as we can keep building the vision” song. Well, not exactly, but pretty close. They do seem pretty committed to continuing the journey of making MySpace all about the users and the community.

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It has been amazing to see the growth of readers to Online Marketing Blog the past year and I really appreciate the comments I’ve received on blog posts and privately.

Our log files show the types of organizations that are reading this blog include huge and small companies, universities, search engines, competitors, friends, etc. To get an even better idea of who the readership is I’d like to invite you to do one or both of two things:

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My current, favorite way of finding new web sites and blogs is hands down, StumbleUpon. I had started using their service over a year ago, but after a few months it just didn’t resonate with me. In the past two weeks I noticed in our main company web site server logs that we were getting a LOT of referring traffic from stumbleupon.com so I decided to check it out again.

I downloaded the toolbar, set preferences and have not been disappointed since. Not only am I a happy user, but StumbleUpon is also a great way to get great web sites or blogs noticed.

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Kauffman eVenturing is featuring several new articles focused on helping entrepreneurs evaluate different aspects of online marketing, from search engine optimization and key word advertising to blogging, online publishing and using eBay as a distribution channel. A few of the articles:

Giving Online Marketing a Greater Share - Chris Topping (Brick and Mortar/Online Retailer)
Honing Pay Per Click for Targeted Results - Jerry Kenefake (Online Retailer)
What MySpace Means for Marketers - Zachary Rodgers (ClickZ)
The Rise of the Participant Economy - David Sifry (Technorati)

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Andy Beal has been around the block and then some when it comes to building SEO-SEM firms. Today he posted his “Top 10 Business Mistakes Search Marketing Firms Make“. Here are Andy’s tips 1-10 and I’ve thrown in my own thoughts and observations after each.

1. Charging a “Set-up” Fee.
We’ve pretty much moved away from this but not 100% as some small projects warrant it. It does help companies spread costs out, but it also has to be managed properly since so much work occurs during the first 60-90 days of a campaign.

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WebmasterWorld has an interesting thread pointing out a seminar to be held Sept 18th at Catholic University called, “Optimizing Your Websites for Google Search”. What’s interesting about it is that the seminar is being taught by Adam Lasnik from Google for a measly $30. Here’s the description:

“If you build it, they will come.”

What do you do when you aren’t getting the traffic from search engines that you expected? We’ll cover the basics of how search engines work and how you can successfully adjust your site to be both human and search-engine-friendly. From live site dissections (no holds barred!) to jargon-busting (what’s a 301 redirect and why should you care?) to lots of Q&A, this session will be absolutely interactive and packed full with actionable information.

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I was recently reading a post on Marc Pentermann’s blog that suggests social media optimization is pretty much SPAM for social media. My comments about that are as follows:

I think the issue of SPAM and any kind of marketing will always exist regardless of the medium. Email, web pages, blogs and social media are all susceptible.

Just because it is possible to SPAM a medium does not invalidate that medium. Should we not send email because others use it for SPAM? That would not make sense.

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In the course of working with a fast growing business, you get exposed to many different people. Prospects, clients, employees, potential employees, vendors and consultants all bring different communication skills to the table. That’s not news of course, but it’s simply amazing to me the lack of effort some people put into communicating effectively.

Here are my top 5 online communication pet peeves:

1. Emails asking for a call back and they don’t include a phone number in their signature, and many times, not a signature at all.
2. Phone messages with a name and a number and no reason for calling.

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