Online Marketing Blog

Yesterday one of our account managers emailed me about a very nice hit (mention in an article) for a media relations client (way to go Bill!) in a prominent technology publication. This pub has an online version and the topic was pretty provocative.

I did a quick search on Google blog search and noticed a significant number of blogs buzzing about this topic. It would be a great opportunity for the client to participate in those threads of dialogue and present their unique perspective. Doing so with a blog post to link back to offering more details would be a great way to connect with a community that cares deeply about the topic. Except one thing. The client doesn’t have a blog.

When the first iteration of this blog went live, there was no intention of doing anything but documenting resources and sharing information. For a short time, we ran some Google AdSense ads and then participated in the beta of the Yahoo Publisher Network for a while. We even had a few image ads.

But ads just didn’t seem right so with the exception of very small sponsor text ads for the RSS feed, there is no advertising on this blog. I suppose one could argue the whole thing is an ad, but not in an explicit way.

There are millions of people around the world that speak languages other than English, yet most blogs I see offer up only English posts. The thought of posting in other languages doesn’t work well with many bloggers as they only know a few languages at most and the time it would take to re-post each post isn’t something we all have the time to do. So what about automatic translation?

Having a plugin to automatically translate your blog into Spanish, Chinese or other languages would be a great way to help gain exposure and readers from other parts of the world. Not only that, but it may also help increase the authority level of your blog.

In doing a bit of research, here are four plugins to help you automatically translate your WordPress blog.

We’ve been blogging here at Online Marketing Blog for just over three years, learning ins and outs along the way. Here are a few of the lessons learned in that time:

• Blogging has been the single most effective marketing initiative for our search marketing agency second only to providing top service to clients who then refer us to other companies. In fact our top sources of new business are:
  1. Referrals
  2. Blog
  3. Articles
  4. Web site
  5. Conferences
• Blogs can serve as a very effective platform for connecting online social networks and offline interactions.
• One of the most effective ways at getting into the media is to become the media in your industry via a blog.

We’ve been running polls the past month and I thought I’d share the results. Below are the past 4 polls we’ve run along with the number of respondents and the top 5 responses for each.

What do you like most about your search marketing job? (67)

• You are truly appreciated for your expertise and contributions (21%)
• The client projects are fun, interesting, challenging (19%)
• Flexible hours, work from home or office (18%)
• It���s all about the money (10%)
• Fun atmosphere/environment at work (10%)

Money made a run for it early, but this one was nearly a tie between being appreciated, fun and interesting projects and flexibility.

What is your favorite marketing conference? (56)

• Search Engine Strategies (46%)
• WebmasterWorld Pubcon (27%)

Many blog readers also have blogs of their own. People start blogs for many reasons. Some are personal and an increasing number are for business. There are many, many reasons to write a blog. In this reader poll, we’d like to know what’s your reason?

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The list of reasons above is limited to six, so if your reason is not listed, please leave it in the comments.

Ron Belanger from Yahoo does a decent job explaining, “Engagement, Search and Social Media” in a video over at iMedia Connection. I like the context in which he presents social search – as a third channel to organic and PPC. Now if iMedia just offered some social bookmark links for the video!

WSJ posits a good question: “Google Tests New Ad Offerings — But Will Advertisers Follow?” In order to accomplish the transfer of ad dollars to other ad formats, Google will need to change existing mindsets about advertising in print, on radio and TV as being too expensive or complicated.

B2B Online’s recent survey gives us BtoB marketers a nice gift: “62.7% of marketers plan to boost budgets in 2007”

Pandia posts it’s Google Santa wish list and Google is listening.

I know it sounds odd, but Macromedia Adobe recently announced Contribute 4 and one of the key features is blogging. Contribute as desktop publishing software? Yep.

According to Contribute’s website, the application now supports MetaWeblog which means it should work with WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type and many others.

At first thought, Contribute doesn’t seem like your average blogging application and that’s because it isn’t. Contribute has worked its way into many workplaces as WYSIWYG website editing software. It was a great solution for those that wanted to edit their website, yet steer clear of the technical aspect of a website.

Every day you hear about how companies are integrating blogs or how this tech person has started a new blog. But, it’s when you hear the success stores of those that you’d never thoguht about that you really realize, anyone can blog; professionally.

Yesterday at the 2006 Mima Summit, Michelle Collins of VH1 gave the afternoon keynote presentation and it was hilarious. Michelle now works for VH1′s Best Week Ever and blogs for a living. She covers the important stuff like how Full House really screwed up their actors and all the Hollywood hook-up/break-up news. Sounds like a rough job doesn’t it? However, it wasn’t all success for Michelle Collins.

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:

One – Leave a comment – introduce yourself and share your thoughts about what’s working with this blog and/or any improvements you would like to see. I’ve been posting to this blog and it’s blogspot predecessor since 2003 and would like to do a better job soliciting reader feedback so Online Marketing Blog can be even better. Your feedback is valuable and greatly appreciated!

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)

Articles from retailers can be pretty insightful but many don’t want to share what they’ve learned in the same way many marketing consultants don’t give away the best info at conferences. However you can often find nuggest of great information in articles like these.

Listening to the news last night, Fox9 here in the Twin Cities was talking about their new website, myfox9.com, and the offerings of a free blog to everyone. Not being one to pass up an opportunity to check out new blogging software, I signed up and made my first post. To say the least, it’s lacking so far.

Missing are quite a few key features. Title tags, customizable categories, PINGing and auto detect RSS feeds are just a few of the bigger missing features. Granted, this may be under heavy construction as quite a few parts of the new site is.