Searching for the Next SEM Guru

Marketing Pilgrim is putting out the call to all search engine marketing (SEM) professionals to enter their SEM Scholarship. Don't worry folks, unlike American Idol, SEM professionals won't be asked to jump up on stage and sing their latest diddy on search engine marketing. Instead, the challenge is put forth to write a compelling article on search engine marketing.

With more than $10,000 dollars worth of prizes, one lucky winner will have a chance to jump start their career by being recognized by the leaders in search engine marketing. Their panel of judges include some of the top SEM gurus in the fields of search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) and a new, groundbreaking online public relations technique, social media optimization (SMO).

Don't wait to enter, the entry deadline is April 6th. To find out more about this exciting SEM contest, visit MarketingPilgrim.com.

Disillusionment of ‘Virtual’ Reality

Komjuniti, a German research firm found that 70% of Second Life residents are disappointed in the presence that marketers have established in Second Life. Seems that marketers so far are just extending their brands with limited creativity and not tapping into Second Life's unique power.

The study also looked at why current Second Life marketers are frustrated. Only a small percentage of Second Life's reported 3 million players, visit regularly and spend any substantial time there. Thus marketers aren't finding a return on their investment or substantial brand building that they were looking for.

Marshal Cahill, political officer for Second Life Liberation Army, decided he didn't like what he experienced in Second Life. To right what he considers wrong, Cahill developed bombs, exploding nukes, and swirling fireballs and used them in front of store fronts like American Apparel.

So it seems that Second Life might not be the picture perfect utopian society. Google is looking to capitalize on interest in virtual world and channel growing discontent with Second Life into a new virtual world.

Why are we spending time, effort and resources on developing these virtual realities when they only turn out to be like our current world? Why the desire for so much more?

Matthew Fox, author, speaker & spirituality theologian, describes our current preoccupation with consumerism and alternate realities as a symptom of our discontent with our 'real' lives mainly work that doesn't nourish the soul's hunger for community and creative expression.

Personally, I choose to be pretty happy with my life. Granted there are days when nothing seems to go my way and I feel as if the whole world is out to get me. But after reconnecting with nature, a loving human being or myself, I'm ready to face the world again. Thanks to the Law of Attraction and Quantum physics, I think I'd rather spend my time co-creating realities for myself here in this dimension and work on figuring out how to help other figure it out too. Maybe that's the thought process that's behind sites like First Life.

What is Twitter.com ?

A few people have asked me what is Twitter? www.Twitter.com There was a clear description provided on a tv news story about Twitter on CBS .

Presidential candidate John Edwards and self described 'tech geek expert' Robert Scoble are twittering.

I have been twittering for a couple weeks now. The really cool part of twitter is that you can set up your account as 'friends' with other Twitteratti and see what they are up to. Occasionally, you get plugged into something really cool. I don't care that someone just 'got to work' but I have been intrigued by some live twittering from conferences and real time alerts about news and happenings on the internet.

Are you twittering? Please connect to me... Jay Berkowitz

Live Sports on the Internet

Right now we are in the middle of what many people call the two weeks for sports, its the middle of the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament, Major League Baseball Opening Day is less than a week away and then next weekend is the Masters. I thought it would be interesting to compare how all three of these view the Internet as a way of watching these events live.

All three stream live video of the events, its just that the three sports offer slightly different coverage. Lets start with what I consider the best of the three, NCAASports March Madness on Demand. As many of you are aware and probably many have utilized, March Madness on Demand, is a completely free service that lets you watch any of the games in the first three rounds of the tournament from your computer. The only limitation the local blackout of the game that is being shown on CBS at the time. CBS Sportsline sums it up best "We look at the NCAA Men's Basketball championship as an opportunity to celebrate achievement and passion all across the country."

Then there is the Masters. The Masters sees the Internet as an option to show additional coverage, as well as coverage that is the most interesting to viewers. The Masters internet bonus coverage starts an hour before the TV coverage does. There is also additional coverage of Amen Corner throughout the day starting at about 10:30am Thursday and Friday and about 12:30pm on the weekend. "Providing this additional coverage further demonstrates the importance we place on the internet," said Billy Payne, Chairman of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament. "The internet complements our broadcast and it fulfills one of our principal objectives of exposing as many people as possible to this great sport of golf. On-line coverage of the Masters has great potential to reach an even larger audience." There is definite truth to this statement as 3 million people streamed video last year of the tournament.

Major League Baseball, through its MLB.TV, is the only sports league that streams its games live over the internet. As with the NCAA Tournament, local Blackout rules apply as are playoff games not visible. MLB.TV is $89.95 for the season and its possible to upgrade to premium for $119.95.

So when are the other sports leagues going to step up and offer their games streaming on the internet. Additionally, the advertising that I see I believe is the same as what would be on the normal local broadcast, how long before we see advertisers placing media buys specific to online streaming sports. Its the ideal market from some companies. as most of these viewers are males, 25-45 years old with broadband or better access and more than likely watching from their office or cubicle during the work day.

Ten Golden Rules wins Gold Medal at PR Olympics!

Ten Golden Rules won the Gold Medal at The Association for Women In Communications PR Olympics for a website promotion and press release services presentation. The Florida search engine optimization company won first place for their demonstration of how to use a press release to generate traffic to a Hurricane Katrina charity website Rescue Rehab Home. The internet public relations and promotion helped raise over $20,000 in donations to rescue abandoned pets after Hurricane Katrina.



Jay Berkowitz, CEO Ten Golden Rules receives the award from Ilisa Finkelman, President , The Association for Women in Communications , Jeff Zbar, Sun-Sentinel Columnist and Miami Herald senior reporter Roberto Santiago

Google Launches Beta Test of PPA Product

There is quite some buzz right now about Google’s launch of it’s AdSense PPA product. Every blog I’ve read mentions that it will be competing directly with CPA/affiliate networks like Commission Junction or LinkShare.

Marketing Pilgrim’s blog mentions talking with Rob Kniaz, a product manager for Google’s advertising products. Kniaz says that Google does not feel it’s in competition but merely an “extension of the current AdWords product”

Luckily I believe that any sort of competition makes the marketplace stronger. I'm not a betting woman but I will be keeping my eye on the industry players and watching what happens.

We signed up to be part of the beta test. I’ll keep you posted of details if we’re selected.

A Better Wikipedia?

There's a new contender in the "free wiki-style encyclopedia" arena. In fact it just publicly launched this week!

Citizendium, a "citizens' compendium of everything," is an experimental new wiki project. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on that model by adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names. This definition is shown on the main page of Citizendium.

Reading through various pages on the site I found interesting tidbits of information. They devote a page entirely to Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed, more properly titled "Why Citizendium Will Surpass Wikipedia!" The page focuses on the differences between Citizendium and Wikipedia and answers objections wikipedia fans threw at them, which they do a nice job meeting every objection.

The "anyone can edit" model used in Wikipedia is being refined by Citizendium to avoid the vandalism and defamation Wikipedia has experienced. Citizendium requires all users to register with their real names, if they do - then they can contribute. And as an added layer of protection, they have editors who approve each user and each posting. Each of the editors are required to have an academic background in a particular area of expertise.

So have you checked out Citizendium yet? What do you think of it so far? If you haven't I recommend you check it out, then come back here and give us your feedback!

Do you know where your Yellow Pages are? Please comment!

I don't know the last time I looked anything up in the Yellow Pages. In fact, the last time I looked for the Yellow books a couple years ago they had been moved and I couldn't find them.

I Google everything. I Google questions on my TREO when I'm out for dinner. I Google Map directions to meetings. I Google News items and sports scores.

I took this picture of my neighbor's recycling boxes. They put their Yellow Pages directly into recycling without even opening them.




















Do you know where your yellow pages are? When is the last time you used them? What are Yellow pages better for than the internet?

Jay Berkowitz

Using New Media for the Public Good - See 'Gone in Four Seconds'

I met the bright team of Ilisa Finkelman and Alesia Russell from the Broward County Sheriff's Office at a Women in Communications event. Here is a great example of using new media - YouTube Videos, Viral Marketing and Word of mouth to spread the good word!

Alesia presented Gone in Four Seconds a YouTube Video produced by the Ft. Lauderdale based Sheriff's Office to alert us all to the risk of leaving your purse or briefcase in an unlocked car for even as little as four seconds!

The scariest part of these crimes...the thieves will not only steal your valuables, they have a much bigger prize in mind, they are going to steal your identity!

Microsoft Cans Search Engine Spam

Search engine spam. It's a problem, not only for the search engines, but for the frustrated users that are trying to find what they're looking for. In the past, shady search engine optimization firms have used techniques like doorway pages and cloaking to get pages ranked in the SERPs. However, according to the New York Times Technology article, "Researchers Track Down a Plague of Fake Web Pages," Microsoft is now saying that they've found a solution to the search engine spam, and methods to detecting the companies behind it.

Spam Double-Funnel: Connecting Web Spammers with Advertisers outlines their five-layer double-funnel model for analyzing redirection spam, in which ads from merchant advertisers are funneled through a number of syndicators, aggregators and redirection domains to get displayed on spam doorway pages, whereas click-through traffic from these spam ads is funneled, in the reverse direction, through aggregators and syndicators to reach the advertisers. The domains in the middle layers provide a critical infrastructure for converting the spam traffic to money.

“A small number of rogue actors who know what they are doing can create an enormous amount of disruption,” said David L. Sifry, chief executive of Technorati, a blog-indexing company that works to keep junk pages of this sort out of its indexes. Until now, these shady operators have been hiding behind scenes, successfully mainly because the search engine spiders typically don't crawl javascripts that these spammers are hiding behind.

Using 'search monkey' programs, Microsoft claims that it came emulate a real person's click-through activity and track the offending spam back to its operators. Researchers noted that the vast bulk of the junk listings was created from just two Web hosting companies and that as many as 68 percent of the advertisements sampled were placed by just three advertising syndicators.

It should be interesting to see what the search engines do with the information.

Sanjaya Malakar is the new Rory Fitzpatrick

Despite pathetic performances and negative reaction from the judges, American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar has been getting enough votes to stay in the competition. Website Vote For The Worst and shock jock Howard Stern have been urging people to vote for Malakar to fuel their sarcastic sense of humor.



A similar fan reaction almost won journeyman hockey player Rory Fitzpatrick a trip to the National Hockey League All Star game. Fitzpatrick was ahead of superstar Nicklas Lidstrom until the final week of voting, many accused the NHL of fixing the results to prevent the embarrassment of sending Fitzpatrick the game.

Who are the big winners?

Fitzpatrick used up most of his 15 minutes of fame.

Sanjaya is clearly a big winner, he might not even be the best singer in his family. His attractive sister (see Shyamali Malakar's American Idol audition on You Tube) wowed the judges with 'Summertime' and Sanjaya rode her coattails for a trip to Hollywood.



Vote For the Worst is the biggest winner in the internet sweepstakes. Their site has spiked in the Alexa rankings during each of the last three American Idol seasons, the site runs banner advertising all over their home page and likely generates a fair amount of revenue cheering on the lucky losers.






PS - We think the same people who are voting for Sanjaya and Rory cast a vote for Heather Mills in Dancing with the Stars last night :)

New Search Engine Recommendation

From time to time, the Internet Marketing Consultant Blog offers views and recommendations of tools and sites, whether it be in regards to Search Engines, Web 2.0 or any other info that we at Ten Golden Rules find new and/or interesting. Its been in the news the last couple days, but I need to inform you of THE GREATEST SEARCH ENGINE EVER (according to my 13 yr old niece, she made me bold for effect) the Kevin Federline Search Engine. I know what you are thinking, who is Kevin Federline (exhusband of Britney Spears) and what does he know about Search Engine Optimization.

There is nothing new or cutting edge about the ranking for the search engine, Kevin and his entourage do not go out and personally look for cool and hip sites and rank pages based on what he likes, actually according to the How it Works, the results are based on Yahoo Search Results. What makes the site unique is that it gives away prizes and awards for using their engine, and not just any prizes, Kevin Federline prizes, just a couple hours ago, T. McPheeters in Illinois won an 8x10 autographed picture of KFed.

Kevin Federline isn't the only "celebrity" to lend his name/image to searchwinmerch other branded search engines include Wynonna, Meatloaf, and Andrew Dice Clay. I am changing my homepage from Google to the Search with Dice, because what better reason is there to use a search engine than the chance you may get a phone call from "The Dice Man", oh wait you could win an invite to Kevin Federline's Birthday Party.

Have you heard about Twitter?

All of the cool social media bloggers and podcastsers are twittering about a new social media website www.Twitter.com . CC Chapman from Crayon has been buzzing about Twitter for weeks (CC is a true early adopter :) ), he shared a story about how the Twitterati came to his aid when he twittered about being stranded in New York by the airlines.

Next, Mitch Joel, the bright Podcaster from Twist Image started reluctantly twittering and he has been catching twitter fever.

Note - Mitch will be in South Florida April 19th doing a keynote presentation for Shop.org at the Hard Rock Casino. We will be holding a 'geek dinner' that night, stay tuned for more info or email me at jay (at) tengoldenrules (dot) com for an invite

So I set up a Twitter profile 'TenGoldTwit'

Today Mitch twittered that Joe Jaffe the Chief Crayonista has joined the Twitter party.

So, I'll keep my Twitter window open for a couple days and see what unfolds.

Jay Berkowitz

Digg This

There's a lot of buzz about "user driven social content websites" such as Digg.com, but what does that mean and how can it help business? In simple terms, sites like Digg provide tactical tools to drive traffic to your website.

So, how does it work? A user submits an article to Digg. After the content is submitted, other people read the submission and "Digg" what they like best. If it gets enough "Diggs" they promote it on their home page where millions of visitors can see it and (hopefully) click through to your site.

Here's a simple case study illustrating the power of Digg even for a story that did not make it to the home page of Digg.com: We submitted a story to Digg. That day, the page views tripled and more than 18% of the traffic to the site was coming from Digg.

Try it out, it's easy: Once you blog or post an article to your site, go to Digg.com and submit it there as well. To encourage others to "Digg" your article, add a simple "Digg This" button to the content to easily allow your site visitors to "Digg" it in one click.

Go "Digg" it.

Google is Your New Home Page

A number of sources have been buzzing about this theory. Even when your customers and prospects know your domain name they type your company name into Google.

Why?

Because it is less keystrokes to type. instead of http://www.TenGoldenRules.com (29 keystrokes) they can type tengoldenrules (14 keystrokes)

Another Reason:

Google delivers over 60% of all searches, the same theory applies for Yahoo, MSN, AOL and ASK (another 35% of all searches)

What are the implications?

1. Check your company name in Google and other search engine searches. Make sure you come up number 1 in the natural side of search (left side) and strongly consider a dominant position in paid search as well.

2. Do your competitors advertise on your name keyword? Do they place in natural results?

3. Are your affiliates bidding on your trademark name? Could you prohibit these TRADEMARK bids and save $$?

Great B2B Lead Generation Webcast

Living life in a Web 2.0 world is very convenient! I just finished viewing the on demand webcast by Brian J. Carroll “How to Precisely Define a ‘Lead’ Before Marketing Begins.” You can listen to it yourself here. Some interesting info from the presentation:

5 Reasons for Lead Generation Failure
1. Most inquiries are not leads!
2. Leads aren’t qualified and prioritized
3. Sales organization isn’t held accountable
4. The baton gets dropped during hand off
5. Closed loop process is missing

Ideal Customer Profile Questions to Ask
-Who do we serve?
-What problem do they face?
-What do we enable them to do?
-What does that mean to them?

Map Out Trigger Events - Keep on top of market opportunities using tools like Google News Alert and Technorati to build the most relevant lists NOT the just the largest.

#1 Priority for Marketers - Lead Generation and Management (nurturing and cultivation)

Lead Nurturing - What are the 5-7 questions that Marketing needs to ask to make sure a lead is ready to be handed off to sales. The leads that have successfully answered those questions should then be defined as a HOT Lead.

Lead Grading with Shared Language-Marketing and Sales needs to use the same language to define a lead. Define a lead then score.

9 Ways to Ensure Sales Follow Up
1. Get buy in from sales team on program
2. Provide qualification information for each sales lead
3. Qualify and distribute sales ready leads immediately
4. Communicate hand off to sales person
5. If lead not followed up it will be pulled/reassigned
6. Regularly close the loop
7. What gets measured gets done
8. Sales management must audit and track rep follow-up
9. Make compensation depend on sales follow-up

Marketing To-Do List
Develop universal lead definition with sales team
Develop internal lead qualification process
Pass only qualified leads to sales team
Provide regular reports on the number of prospects available (by segment, by market, etc.)
Get input from sales on target companies and names
Get sales team input to co-develop campaigns
Connect sales and marketing data in CRM
Regular close the loop meetings

Sales To-Do List
Develop universal lead definition with marketing team
Provide marketing target companies and names
Pass back leads that are not active in your active pipeline
Regularly update lead records in your database/CRM!
Define how you will close the loop with the marketing team
Provide feedback to marketing regularly on your leads
Develop a lead nurturing plan (with marketing)
Regular close the loop meetings

Benefits of Universal Lead Definition
Higher qualified, sales-ready leads
Sales force has less frustration
Increased sales effectiveness
Better funnel management
More accurate and consistent ROI metrics

I just ordered his new book Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and will give you a review soon. Also, I just added his blog to my bloglines feed.

I hope you take the time to check it out too!

Yahoo! Goes Mobile

So for those of you who haven't heard of or seen the new Yahoo! Go here is a run down of it's features, capabilities for the consumers and what this means for advertisers. Yahoo! Go is the first application that is optimized for the "small screen" of a mobile phone and is way for you to get email, news, photos, and more on your mobile phone.

Yahoo! Go uses widgets, which are your own personal channels for email, local info & maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather, Flickr™ photos and search. With the technology it uses, your widget content is automatically and continuously “pushed” to your phone, so it’s always right there when you want it.

According to Yahoo! you can also check the weather, keep tabs on your teams, get local news or get maps and directions, examine your stocks, and keep up with your favorite news sources, blogs and more from all across the Web.

So what phones are compatible with Yahoo! Go? Currently over a 100 phones now run Yahoo! Go, including Windows Mobile devices.

Are you an advertiser? Along with Yahoo! Go, Yahoo! has launched Yahoo! Mobile Ad Solutions. Right now Yahoo! Mobile Ad Solutions is the the Beta stages, but Yahoo! is promising two ways to reach customers on their mobile phones: Display Advertising and Sponsored Search. Stay tuned for updates!

Google Releases Additionaly Click Fraud Investigation Information

A couple weeks ago, Google provided a list of common concerns and tips related to their inhouse Click Fraud Investigations. Late last week they provided an update on their 3 step process for dealing with Click Fraud, which are 1.real time filters 2. offline analysis and 3. reactive investigations. The interesting thing about this research is that most of the work is done proactively by Google, either through automatically filtering with algorithms (which supposedly catches a majority of the invalid clicks) or through your click quality adjustments that appear on your monthly statements. The last step is if an advertiser believes they are a further victim of Click Fraud, then they can file a complaint and Google conducts an investigation.
Now what are the breakdowns of these three steps of and how much click fraud is out there, Google estimates the first two steps is less than 10% of clicks are invalid and virtually all of thos are proactively detected. And the percentage that gets through their systems and potentially could be click fraud that they missed, less than .02%. Thats right less than .02%. Let me put that in perspective for you. If you have a $10,000/month budget less than $2 of that is click fraud. So your daily budget of $333/day is roughly $.07 of click fraud.
This begs the question, how many of you have clicked on a competitors ad to cost them a little bit, or even clicked on your own ad to increase your click through rate? Is that Click Fraud, yes to some extent, but according to Google, they know you did that and actually caught the click before it hit you or your competitors bill.

"Note from Boss to Employees" An interesting link from Seth Godin to Michael Wade

Seth Godin linked to this insightful post on Michael Wade's Execupundit.com blog "Note from Boss to Employees".

One of my ex-employees told me that her Dad taught her "Your job is to make your boss look good." At the base level this is a great way to approach your job. You help your boos look good, she/he trusts you with more work, better projects etc. and a promotion and raise can't be far behind.

Jay Berkowitz, Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Consultant Blog