Everyone Likes to be Asked

Recently a client asked if they should still send out their eNewsletter even though they felt their website was not up to par – and in fact – had just started working on a redevelopment project.

I suggested that, rather than seeing it as a reason not to send their information; they reach out to their community and get them involved. Their intended recipients were, after all, previous visitors to their site and business partners. By including an article announcing the web site redesign project and soliciting comments on the current site, the client would be able to accomplish several objectives:

- mitigate the impression the current site would make by managing the expectations of the potential visitors
- gain feedback and viewpoint from a core audience
- communicate to their core audience that their opinions are valued
- send a time sensitive message

For me, this is a classic way to harness the social media aspect of the Internet and fully leverage the interactive nature of the medium. Since "everyone likes to be asked" - a simple question can be all it takes to get on the road to developing the right relationship with your website visitors.

Improvements to Panama

The Yahoo Blog last night announced improvements to Panama. Most of the changes are nothing to special such as the ability to copy and move keywords. There is also an improved Keyword selector tool that can be found on the Ad Group Page with a "+Add Keywords" button.
The biggest change to Panama was in the guidance of writing ads. It is now possible to view current ads of other advertisers using the same keyword or keywords. I have included a screenshot of the guide. This is a nice improvement but in this example the complete ad isn't shown completely so it is not as helpful as it could be. I, like many of you reading this blog I am sure, are looking at dual monitors. It is just as easy and more effective for me to just open up two windows one for editing ads and one for showing the ads that our competitors are currently running. Additionally, I had to go through about seven or eight keywords before there was one that had the ads showing.

In my opinion these upgrades do improve Panama but there are certain tools that are missing to make Panama in line with Adwords, the most obvious is an app like Editor.

Top 10 Blog Optimization Tips (Part 2)

Last week we touched base on the first part of the Top 10 Blog Optimization Tips, which were inspired by Stephen Spencer's blog optimization presentation, Making Blogging and RSS Pay Off: Driving Traffic and Sales Through Optimized Blogs and Feeds, from Search Engine Strategies in Toronto.

These blog tips cover strategies for optimizing your blog to its fullest potential:

6. Blog Categories - Create categories by separating the blog posts that all fall under a certain keyword phrase, and use a "sticky" post that is optimized for your main keyword phrase. The other blog posts should support the "sticky" post and created a well-optimized content page.
7. Related Posts Feed - Create internal feeds that will show titles of other relevant blog posts at the bottom of your current blog post. Wordpress makes this easy with the Contextual Related Posts plugin.
8. Web 2.0 Widgets - Make it easy for your readers to share your blog posts with their social network or community. Add widgets to your blog for Technorati, Del.icio.us, DIGG and other Web 2.0 sites.
9. Ping Your Blog - Let the search engines know that you've updated your blog by using Ping-o-Matic, Pingoat.com, Ping.ws and Feedshot.
10. Optimize RSS Feeds - Break up your feeds by category, latest comments and comments by post, giving your readers the choice of how they want to receive your content. Send full text, not summaries and include 20 or more items (not just 10).

To get more blog optimization tips, go to Stephen Spencer's Scatterings and Problogger.net.

Live Blogging CNN sits down with Shawn Gold VP, Marketingfrom MySpace

This morning at ad:tech Miami Alberto Padilla, News Anchor, CNN en Español is sitting with Shawn Gold, Senior VP the Marketing and Content of MySpace.com.

Here are a few of the interesting sound bites:

- Every day MySpace reviews 6,000,000 photos and 600,000 videos for approval before they go on the site
- MySpace reaches over 60% of 15-24 years olds and 35% of 25-34 years olds
- They just launched MySpace Spain with a private concert at a small venue featuring the Smashing Pupmkins. Invitations were available through a viral video on MySpace and YouTube
- One of the major uses of the site is to communicate with family
- We often think of MySpace as the domain of the teen, Shawn pointed out that the site is a huge portal for small businesses, bands, independent film companies and restaurants.

Link Building advice

There are many concepts and ideas behind a solid link building campaign. One of the key elements is relevance. When linking to other sites, it is important to link to sites which follow a similar idea, or theme as yours. By doing this, it encourages others to go to your site. Also, to gain page rank, one has to consider what page rank really means. In the previous years, you could simply spread out your links as far and quickly as you can, and in this way increase rank. However, as competition has grown fiercer, the methods of gaining page ranking have changed as well. Keep in mind that Google uses over 200 methods to determine site ranking. Age and relative back links are some of the indicators you are looking for.

Your "Friends" ARE Your Reputation

We all know the type. They have more contacts in LinkedIn than anyone could possibly know, and they accept every MySpace friend invitation. They even aggressively seek out new connections just to get more. They do these things as if they matter – but frankly, these days – they don't. In fact, it can do more harm than good.

Online your "friends" really ARE your reputation. If you have a real network, built based on common interests or even real world relationships, it shows very clearly. If you're a "friend collector", that shows quite evidently, too. And these days, people online don't trust the latter.

With the advent of more organized social media, your online reputation is something to be taken very seriously. Yesterday, when conducting an interview, the candidate asked me about my last position – by naming the actual company and my title there. "How", I asked, "did you know where I worked before here?" And, of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover he had found it online.

Obviously, I am of the mindset that you should choose your online friends wisely, nurture those relationships for the value they bring, and never give into the anonymous friend request. Yesterday provided ample validation for me that I'm doing it the right way.

CEO Jay Berkowitz to Moderate panel at Ad-Tech Miami, Wednesday, June 27th

Ad-Tech Miami is taking place at the Miami Beach Convention Center this week. The buzz is building as the internet marketing community is coming to South Beach for the event which takes place Tuesday and Wednesday June 26th and 27th.

On Wednesday, Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz will be moderating a panel called Blogs, Podcasts and Vidcasts. On the panel will be:

- Jesus Hoyos, the Managing Partner, of Solvis Consulting, the leading Customer Relationship Management specialist on Hispanic and Latin American CRM. Jesus has an awesome Spanish blog on eMarketing and CRM at Jesus Hoyos - CRM en Latinoamerica.

- Julio Vaca, is a Senior Product Manager at PodZinger, now branded Everyzing. Everyzing has speech to text software that can turn your audio podcast into words so the text gets picked up by the search engines.

- Diego Naranjo, a Director with Miami agency Latin3 has a strong blog about the Miami Ad biz and Hispanic Marketing in the United States at Miamiadguy.com.

The Evolution of the Online Press Release

When it comes to the Internet, an industry I've been involved with since 1994 – one that constantly inspires, confounds and elates me – you simply cannot rest on your laurels. No truer example of this exists today than the evolution taking place in online press releases.

Of course, most websites feature press releases – nothing more than a copy and paste of whatever is prepared for the media – uploaded as an afterthought. But as Greg Jarboe pointed out recently in his article The Crowded World of Press Release SEO, that tactic has already become passé, in favor of the "search engine optimized press release". And while SEO press releases are hardly new in the internet marketing space, (and Ten Golden Rules has done hundreds of these for our clients with great success) Greg predicts 75% of PR professionals will be adopting this tactic within the next year, too.

So, with mainstream adoption at critical mass, what is an internet marketer to do to stay one step ahead? Enter Social Media press releases. This emerging trend is the latest method to get your news noticed by both the media and search engines. Check out some of the pioneers of this method, which "mashes up" the socially collaborative nature of the internet with the typical text-based news release:

Crayon produced social media press release for Coca-Cola

Brian Solis' PR 2.0 Blog

SHIFT Communication's Social Media Press Release Template

This tactic inspires me to keep thinking of new ways to leverage the internet for our clients. Adding photos, videos, pre-created del.icio.us pages, DIGG links, RSS and the like to a press release will completely change the face of many corporate online identities. For those of us in the internet, it's just the next logical step.

Top 10 Blog Optimization Tips (Part 1)

I had an opportunity to see Stephen Spencer's presentation on blog optimization called Making Blogging and RSS Pay Off: Driving Traffic and Sales Through Optimized Blogs and Feeds while I was in SES Toronto. This notable web marketing blogger offers some fantastic blog optimization tips during his presentation.

However, knowing that time is short and all of you in internet land might not have the time to sit down and take a look at the blog presentation, I've compiled a top 10 list of tips for bloggers, which I will highlight over two separate blog posts.

So without further ado, here is part 1 of the Top 10 Blog Optimization Tips:

1. Name of Your Blog - Use something keyword friendly if at all possible. For example, Ten Golden Rules uses the keyword phrase "internet marketing strategy" in our blog name.
2. Blog Title Tags - Tag names/keywords should go in the title of the post. If you use WordPress, download the SEO Title Tag Plugin to customize and make your blog title tags more search engine friendly.
3. Blog URLs - Make sure your blogging software produces the URLs with hyphens and not underscores. If you're not willing to take Spencer's word on the subject, Matt Cutts, Google software engineer, explains why it's better to use hyphens in URLs.
4. Anchor Text - Use keywords in your anchor text when you link to past blog posts, other bloggers (like Stephen Spencer) and back to your corporate site. Neat-o tool is a great tool for checking backlinks and anchor text.
5. Tag Blog Posts - Tag or label your blog posts with relevant keywords, and use tag clouds to group relevant blog posts together. If you use Wordpress, Spencer recommends using the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin.

Squatting: The Old and The New

Most of us are familiar with the term "domain squatting," when people would buy domain names of big companies with the hopes of getting rich by one day selling the domain name off to the big company. Some people got rich and some people went to court for trademark infringement. A more complete and technical definition can be found on Wikipedia under "cybersquatting."

A new type of squatting is being done now, by signing up for a blog and requesting your blog url (something.blogspot.com) to contain a trademarked company name and then leaving the blog empty. I was recently found a Blogger account which had over a hundred company named blogs registered, none of which are active!

This person had the blog domain I needed for a company who I legitimately represent and since it was an inactive blog, Blogger was very helpful in releasing the name to me, but the user still owns over a hundred blogs that are inactive.

And I wonder how Time Warner, AOL, Burger King, HBO and Jay Leno feel about this blogger account owning their name?

Should Blogger do something about this? What do you think?

Google Page Rank and the looming Death of Link Farms

In the SEO (search engine optimization) world of today, many companies with new websites are aggressively building links to improve their all-mighty Google Page Rank.

In the beginning all links where created equal, that is a link from another site to your site gave your site more importance in Google's algorithm. Over time Google has changed their ranking algorithm , and most noticeably in March 2007, high quality, relevant links now carry more weight than links from sites that are not highly ranked and links from sites that are not similar in content.

"Link Farms" companies who offer links to your site from a number of low page rank sites are not going to deliver the return that they used to, or the return that many of them advertise. As web managers recognize this shift, the death of the link farm can not be far away.

This is not to say the idea of building links and working to increase your rank isn't worth the effort, but the issue is one of quality and relevancy. Is your site garnering links from quality websites with high page ranks and content relevant to your web content? If not, you need to have a close look at your link building strategy.

What We Can Learn From Our Kids

With all the buzz about Second Life seeming to grow each day, I remembered why I thought it wasn't such a big deal when I first heard about it. I thought, "Well, my kids have been spending hours playing an avatar based role playing game in a 3-D environment where they can earn and spend for years". I'm talking about World of Warcraft, but there are many other examples.

Back in April, Chad Stoller did an interesting blog post on how web-savvy kids are today. And not just how computer oriented they are, but how the internet is teaching them the basics of being a good consumer. While revisiting this blog post today, I remembered thinking about the parallels between Second Life and World of Warcraft. And I wonder, will my kids continue to expect this kind of online environment as they grow up? Or with they "grow out of" the need to be entertained this way?

How should marketers use the examples of today to predict the future? Which way do you think it will go? I'm interested in your comments.

SES Miami - Search Term Research & Targeting

I attended a good session on Search Term Research & Targeting. Moderator Jessie Stricchiola from Alchemist Media Inc. assembled a strong panel including Sylvio Lindenberg, from Media Contacts in Brazil, Larry Mersman, a Vice President at search products company Trellian, and Liana Evans, Search Marketing Manager, Commerce360 who is also a prominent search Blogger Search Marketing Gurus.

Here are some of the highlights:

The Consumer Cycle of Purchase starts with searches for shorter terms (LCD tv), as they get close to a purchase decision they search longer terms (Sharp LCD tv vs Panasonic LCD tv), at the end of the purchase cycle they include terms like buy online, buy now (Sharp Aquos 41 inch LCD tv buy online best price)

There is a risk targeting short terms, for example the term 'sandals' can be a search for a resort or a style of shoe. The term ‘Paris' can be a search for a city or the famed Heiress/Actress/Inmate.

Misspellings are best left to the pay-per-click campaign vs. putting incorrect words on your site. Some words like recipes have a lot of misspellings, e.g.: recipies, receipes, reciepes, reciepes, receipeis.

The group recommended using a range of tools for keyword research because different tools pull from different databases. Free tools for keyword research including Yahoo's Keyword Selector Tool, AdWords (biggest weakness is lack of seasonality) and Google Trends (which is good for seasonality).

Most recommended using a combination of the free tools and multiple paid tools:
Wordtracker - a tool to research keyword searches by website (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
Trellian's Keyword Discovery - is a strong keyword research tool and they also have a competitive intelligence tool that tells you which sites are sending competitors thiergetting traffic and which keywords are driving the traffic
Hitwise - is an expensive tool, strong for competitive research, it also has a function that can measure the number of clicks a website received by keyword.
Spyfu tells you about competitor sites (great tool if you can't afford Hitwise)
Adguru ia a competitve analysis tool
Blogpulse and Technorati can search the number of mentions on blogs

TSA Hassles a Woman over Sippy Cup.

With the constant change in our nations air travel guidelines and restrictions, I am sure many of us have been to the highly informative site, www.TSA.gov. My parents flew in for a visit this weekend and they wanted to be clear on what they could and could not bring as a carryon. While on the site, I came across their Mythbuster page. According to the site, a woman was hassled at security over a sippy cup. This happens quite frequently at airports nationwide, maybe not over sippy cups specifically, but over what can and can not be brought on a plane.
The woman made a little bit of a fuss last week in the news and in an attempt to fight back the TSA posted the video of the incident on their site, but also went the extra step to post the video on Youtube and allowing comments.
I find this very cutting edge on the part of the TSA and applaud them for this proactive approach, it is important to remember that Big Brother is watching and that is only a matter of time before the entire world will be able to keep tabs as well.

LiveBlogging! Google Presentation at Search Engine Strategies

The best presentation of the morning so far was from Sarah Carberry, Google's Multicultural Development Manager in the New York office.






Sarah suggested using Google Trends to track keyword searches over time, and best of all searches by region are available, here is a sample of some hotel brands searched in Google Trends:











Another valuable suggestion was to think about search related to the cycle of a purchase, first step is Awareness, then Interest, followed by Consideration then Intent. At early stages people are searching on the search engines, then they are 'looking for truths' videos, other consumer reviews, blog posts etc.

Sarah showed research from Wish-Bone's participation in Martha Stewart's Apprentice tv show, searches went up 935% following the tv appearance.

She suggested setting up your Adwords campaign in English and Spanish if you are targeting the Hispanic audience.

Episode #1 of The 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Podcast!

10 Golden Rules of internet Marketing Podcast Episode 1 The Premiere!
Welcome to our first episode.

Please share comments and call ins at 206-888-6606 or email podcast (at) 10goldenrules.com

A Big Thank you to Mitch Joel from the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast and www.TwistImage.com and The Twist Image Blog for helping us get the podcast off the ground.

Also thanks to Joe Jaffe’s Across the Sound, CC Chapman’s Managing the Gray, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson’s For Immediate Release, the Business Week CEO Guide to Technology, Bryan Pearson’s New Comm Road and Danny Sullivan and Darrin Babin’s Daily Search Cast for tremendous inspiration!

News and Notes
Last week we presented at Search Engine Strategies in Toronto and this week, June 18th and 19th we will be at Search Engine Strategies Latino.
Next week, on June 27, I will be moderating a panel at Ad-Tech Miami titled Blogs, Podcasts and Vidcasts.
On July 9 at Affiliate Summit 2007 East, I will be presenting Web 2.0 - The Ten Critical Strategies for Affiliate Marketing.

Ten Golden Rules ‘Live From the Blog’: Margie talks about Google Universal Search, Kathryn explains Conservapedia, Jeff highlights his TREO and Cingular error with the Captcha, and Suzannah discusses ‘How To’ Video Websites.

What’s Hot Intro 'So Hot' NoCo, 'That's Hot' thebrew
‘Facebook’ Fast Company Article about Mark Zuckerberg, founder.

John Donovan, the COO of Lending Club, a person-to-person lending website that launched their product in beta, on Facebook.

Mitch Joel formed a Facebook group called the 6 Pixels of Separation Podcast Society

The Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Rules 1-5
Golden Rule #1, There are no rules, test, test and re-test
Golden Rule # 2, The internet is not television. Internet marketing is an interactive measurable medium like direct mail. Use Direct Marketing strategies to measure lifetime value and cost per acquisition.
Golden Rule #3 – Create a UVP - a free offer or free widget on your website that will create an ongoing two way relationship with your website visitors
Golden Rule #4 If you build it they won’t just come, you must push, pull and drag visitors to your website through advertising, search, affiliates and other integrated tactics
Golden Rule # 5 Subscription Models Survive

Music Credits
http://www.podsafemusicnetwork.com
Your Golden Rule – Shagg http://www.myspace.com/shagg
Ten Golden Rules Theme Music ‘Rain’ courtesy of DJ Sean Miller and Carey Britt

Download The 10 Golden Rules Podcast
Please share comments and call ins at 206-888-6606 or email podcast (at)10goldenrules.com

Buy a New Kitchen - Get a PURL!

Recently I started the process of remodeling my kitchen. We ended up going to Lowe's for the "one stop shop" approach, and so far the experience has been very positive. Shortly after making our initial purchase, we received a direct mail postcard that included a "PURL". A PURL is a "P"ersonalized "URL". In this case, it sent us to a website where we could find more information (videos and links) on the cabinets and countertops we'd purchased.

Unfortunately the cabinets and countertops featured at the PURL were not the same ones we had ordered, prompting us to make a phone call to Lowe's to ensure we were getting the right product.

With the highly trackable nature of online marketing, PURLs are an easy way to marry that ability to your (more traditionally difficult to track) offline promotions. The PURL tracking system can tell you about visits, activity and even conversions. Just make sure you don't end up panicking the customer with a minor electronic mistake.

Search Engine Marketing Opportunities in Canada

This week I had the honor of speaking at Search Engine Strategies in Toronto. While I was there, attending the other sessions, I had the opportunity to talk to some Canadian-based SEM specialists and find out the state of search engine marketing in Canada.

First, the Canadian market is highly under utilized. Gord Hotchkiss gave a rant at the end of his presentation, Communities, Conversations and Connections: The New Reality of Marketing, at Yahoo sponsored breakfast on how Canada needs to get a clue about search engine marketing. He provided statistics that showed that Canada leads the pack on online usage at 40 hours per month, which is significantly more than the average US user at 29.4 hours. Even though 70% of Canadian households are wired into the internet and use it to research and buy products and services, Canadian businesses are only spending 6% of their advertising budget on Internet advertising.

Okay, so if Canadian businesses aren't tapping into the Canadian market, what about the US? Unfortunately, US businesses are just as clueless when it comes to Canada. Most online US retailers don't ship to Canada, so most Canadians don't bother searching for goods on US websites.

So how can US search engine marketers tap into the Canadian market?

1. Research the shipping regulations between US to Canada. Shopping and Shipping Across the Canadian Border is a nice place to search your search.
2. Make sure your shopping cart is equipped to handle international ordering and the different exchange rates.
3. Once your company understands the regulations and are ready to sell to Canadians, advertise that you ship to Canada.

Watch out Canada...if your businesses aren't willing to fill the need, someone else will come along and fill it. And personally, I think the Canadian search engine marketing landscape could do with a little competition.

Two Magical Words to Improve Your Search Engine Performance

"Site Map"

There are two ways to give the search engines what they need to fully index your website. First, does your website have the two words 'Site Map' in your navigation, or on the bottom of the page in an underlined link? Does your site map link to a page that contains links to all pages on your site? If not you are missing a tremendous opportunity to ensure that Google and the other search engines can navigate to all of the pages on your site, read those pages and add the text found on the pages to their search results. Search engine spiders are automated programs that travel around the internet following each link they find and reading content on the pages they come to. When the spiders come to a website page, and they find a link called 'site map', this makes it easy for them to find links to all the pages.

Second, try the Sitemaps.org protocol. This is a guideline recognized by all of the major search engines with simple directions for setting up an XML schema for the spiders. Please direct your webmaster to this link to make it easy for the search engines spiders to digest your website content.

Will I see you at Search Engine Strategies Miami?

Are you going to Search Engine Strategies Miami next Monday June 18th and Tuesday June 19th? We'd love to meet up and talk shop!

Here are some of the sessions I have bookmarked:

Tapping Into US Hispanics & Latin Americans Via Search with Nacho Hernandez, Founder and CEO, iHispanic Marketing Group, Emerson Calegaretti, VP of Client Development, Latin America, Acronym Media, Rafael Jiménez, General Manager, Advertising and Publisher Group, Yahoo! Hispanic Americas, Jack Flanagan, Executive Vice President, comScore Media Metrix, Sarah Carberry, Multicultural Development Manager, Google

SEM Campaign & Project Management, Speakers: Frank Watson, Head Search Marketing, FXCM, Alexi Huntley, Anthropologist/Marketing Director, Naturegate, Paul D. Saffery, Managing Director, SilverDisc Chile, Martín Gallone, Marketing Manager for Argentina, MercadoLibre

Link Building: Jessie Stricchiola, Founder, Alchemist Media Inc., Todd Sarouhan, President, GoVisitCostaRica.com, Mike Grehan, Founder & CEO, Searchvisible Ltd., Debra O'Neil-Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link, Victor H. Pitts, Vice President of Sales and Client Services, Moniker.com

PS - Don't miss a visit to the trade show floor. I often find I learn more on the 'floor' than in the sessions.

eMail me at Jay (at) Tengolenrules (dot) com

How Competitive is Your Site?

So this morning I open Mozilla Firefox, as I do every morning when I boot up. Well, today I noticed something new in the browser - a ranking metric called "Compete."

The "compete" ranking has been added to SearchStatus - an add-on to Firefox that shows
Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and now Compete.com Ranking.

Here's a better view of SearchStatus:

TenGoldenRules.com has a Compete Rank of 751,402 - great! But what does that mean? After doing some research, here is what I found out about compete.com:

Launched in 2000 Compete.com organizes the clicks we all make on the web. The vision is simple: if we all share our clicks, then each of us gets smarter by knowing what's happening across the web. Through click-sharing, Compete extends search algorithms by tapping the collective online experiences of millions of people.

Right now Compete estimates site traffic and engagement metrics based on the daily browsing activity of over 2,000,000 U.S. Internet users. So who are the top three competing sites on the internet according to Compete.com?

1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. Ebay

These results shouldn't be surprising to any of us and I don't think they will change very much, if at all.

So, does anyone have insight to share about this new ranking metric? And how do you feel about click-sharing?

Link Building and Politics

With the power of link building and key words it is possible to play tricks with rankings. This is an unfortunate use of the tools we use to reach so many but with free time people come up with the oddest things. In 2004 if you looked up Google and Yahoo and looked up waffles you would have found John Kerry as the number one choice. Even now on yahoo he is still number 4.















Also called 'Google bombs', we're sure it is only a matter of weeks before the 2008 political contenders get into the mud and try and use SEO Link tactics as a tool to discredit their opponents. It is not what it was meant for and nor should it be used in this way. A couple other examples include “miserable failure” and “french military victories” All would show amusing twists that in fact are proof of twisting a system of neutral information for a personal attack. With the most hotly contested presidential election on the line it would be wise to expect every trick in the book to be used.

Google Universal Search and Social Media Marketing

If you've noticed the effect that Google's latest innovation, universal search, has had on search results - you've started to see things like Google maps, Froogle listings and Google videos at the top of the results for certain searches (like this one). It's a massive change for our industry, and its impact is only starting to be felt. Not only do we appreciate the richness of the search results as regular users of Google, but we also feel energized by the possibilities for our clients. Recently, a client video we uploaded to YouTube and Google Video almost instantly infiltrated the Google universal search results – making a big splash for our client – while at the same time, completely validating our efforts as an internet marketing company.

Google's new approach is already challenging the way we approach search engine optimization – and the end result, if you apply the appropriate creativity and strategic thinking, is another doorway to social media marketing.

7 Lessons you Can Learn from the Smart Marketers at Affiliate Summit

Shawn Collins and Missy Ward continue to amaze me with the smart marketing they do for their top trade show Affiliate Summit, taking place in Miami July 8-10.

Here are 7 Things you can learn from these virtuoso marketers:

1. Surprise me - Last Friday I received two old fashioned mail communications from Shawn and Missy, the first one, an inflated ball was a piece of marketing genious. Everyone in my office was talking about it and playing with it before it made its way to me.





This amazing idea comes from Send A Ball in Chicago, read all about this cool company.








2. Use Web 2.0 Technology - Shaun and Missy are using Video really well to promote the show and to promote their partners, exhibitors and speakers. Here's a video they shot in our Ten Golden Rules Booth at the Las Vegas Affiliate Summit.

3. Blogging for Dollars - Blogs are no longer a pull strategy, Shawn and Missy are doing a great job pushing their blog out through emails and RSS feeds.





















4. Old fashioned direct mail stands out - We went back to the future to promote the American Marketing Association events in South Florida with yellow postcards used to promote every upcoming event. Shawn and Missy sent me a postcard last Friday, the same day we were having a ball with the Send A Ball.





















5. Consistency - The Affiliate Summit Messages come as regular as clockwork, keeping the event very top of mind.

6. Hurry, We're Selling Out!! A little supply and demand marketing goes a long way. The Las Vegas show was 'sold out' about three weeks in advance and Shaun and Missy helped desperate affiliates find tickets for sale on eBay. I don't remember any of the events being jammed to capacity, but the perception that tickets were in short supply will be long remembered. The hotel has already sold out for Miami and the Blog today announced a sell out of show tickets expected by June 22nd.

7. Great Content - We will be presenting a new version of 'Affilaite 2.0 - Discover the Ten Web Tends defining the new internet' on day 1 in Miami and a number of other great presenters are booked. Here's a link to a video of Jake Bailey from Overstock.com

I hope to see you in Miami, if you are coming please send me an email in advance so we can meet up to jay (at) tengoldenrules (dot) com , or come by our booth to say hi!

Conservapedia

Touting themselves as the "trustworthy" encyclopedia, Conservapedia is rapidly getting noticed in the media as the conservative online encyclopedia that is taking on Wikipedia and it's liberal supporter Google.

In a stroke of brilliance, this "little encyclopedia-that-could" has gotten our attention with its rather alternative point of view. Unlike Wikipedia, it's not trying to claim it's unbiased. This social networking site revels in its narrow view of the world. Claiming that its content is "educational, clean, and concise," Conservapedia has set forth a set of Commandments for its editors:

• Everything you post must be true and verifiable.
• Always cite and give credit to your sources...
• Edits/new pages must be family-friendly, clean, concise, and without gossip or foul language.
• When referencing dates based on the approximate birth of Jesus...

Okay, that's where they lost me. I was fine with the first couple of "commandments" but then they had to bring Jesus into it.

I foresee the next couple of weeks as being very busy for Conservapedia. Bloggers will either vilify the conservative view point or support the conservative view with an almost religious zeal. However, once the media fury has ended and bloggers move on to the next big thing, will Conservapedia continue on? Only time will tell. I wish Conservapedia all the luck and give them Kudos for a brilliant marketing ploy.

SHOUT!

Social Media marketing company, Sway, has created a turnkey tool for distributing and tracking Web 2.0 marketing campaigns. This single integrated suite of tools allows anyone to leverage the power of Social Media Marketing.

With "Shoutlet", you can send "Shouts" either via podcast, RSS Feed, eNewsletter, Mobile Messaging (SMS) or website-based applet. "Shouts" are whatever message you want to send - you simply pick the method to send it, design/write the "Shout", provide the list and then send. You can import contacts from a variety of sources (LinkedIn, Plaxo, Excel, etc.). Once imported, contacts can be managed in Shoutlet, too. All tracking and reporting is done in Shoutlet - with a single dashboard reporting activity in real time.

Sales can use it to reach out to current clients, it's a PR professionals dream and the Marketing applications are limited only by your list.

A free demo is available. But, get behind me - I'm already on the list. :)

Yahoo! Tracking You

Yahoo! is using an interesting technique (Web Beacons) to track those who either use their groups or their services. If this was used to benefit you, for instance to make finding sites easier, it would not be an issue. But, it's actually being done to share with their partner companies – and without your permission. Many find this an invasion of privacy.

If you wish to opt out of being tracked by Yahoo! you can follow these simple steps.

1. Use this site http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy and click the "Cookies" link under the "Special Topics" column.

2. Then Click the "Web Beacons" link under the "Reference Links" Column.

3. On this page, click the "click here to opt out" link at the end of the third paragraph under the "Outside the Yahoo! Network" title.

4. Once the screen loads press the Confirm Opt out Button.

5. Once the next screen loads, watch out that you do not click the "Cancel Opt-out" button, your action will be cancelled and you’ll be right back where you started. Simply close the window and your done.

For more information please go to, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacons

Microsoft's Bill Gates agrees with Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz - The Yellow Pages are Dying Off

In a Blog Post dated March 22nd and a Blog Post written April 22nd Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz stated that "Yellow Pages are dying a slow death".

As reported in Ad Age May 14, 2007 (see below) Bill Gates "predicted the Yellow Pages are headed for extinction."



















A number of top blogs also covered this story:

Donna Bogatin on ZD Net

In a Q & A last week with Joanne Bradford, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief Media Officer, at the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007, Gates projected a short life span for the Yellow Pages.

"Well, the Yellow Pages are going to be used less and less. We should be able, when you go to the service that's going to take our technology and the Tellme technology that we acquired, when you ay something like plumber, the presentation you'll get will be far better than what you get in the Yellow Pages. After all, we know your location, and so we can cluster around that. We can take the information and show you the names, and then you can expand the information easily."

The Chris Silver Smith on NaturalSearchBlog

"Last week at the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007, Bill Gates interacted with Microsoft’s Corporate VP and Chief Media Officer, Joanne Bradford in an interview/Q&A session, and he predicted that among those under 50, yellow pages usage would drop down to zero within five years!"

David A. Utter on WebProNews.com

David Chase wrote a great story on the Sun Valley Idaho Blog

And Benjamin J. Romano in the Seattle Times

"The traditional Yellow Pages are doomed as voice-activated Internet searches combined with on-screen interfaces on smart mobile devices get better and proliferate, Gates said. The company's recent acquisition of voice-technology provider TellMe is accelerating the trend."

What do you think? Do you agree with Mr. Gates and Mr. Berkowitz?

Protecting Your Online Brand

We all have signed up for newsletters or made purchases online. Part of the process is the Captcha, the little box that you have to fill out to prove you are a real person not an automated bot. The Captcha stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" and was trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University. This valuable tool can help eliminate form spam, most of us take these usual random letter/number generators for granted.
Well not me, I always look at them and see if they are real words or just random gibberish, also trying to find unique words. I recently bought a Palm Treo 680 and was signing up for their MyPalm program and I found a unique word and was not impressed with my characters I had to type in, in fact I was a little offended. To be honest not that offended I thought it was funny, but I am willing to bet I am the exception. Some potential clients may have been so offended they may not have signed up for the service or if this would have been an online purchase cancelled their transaction and purchased elsewhere, losing out on this sale and potentially many other sales in the future.
So the lesson is, be careful of the image you portray on your site, whether it be content that you have direct control over or not, it may end up costing someone their a**s.

Instructional Videos Booming on the Net

How many of you search for "howto" or "do it yourself" or "instructional" videos? Many of us, including myself, search for these videos regularly. Whether we want to learn how to do magic card tricks, boil an egg, open a stuck drive on your pc or learn new hula hooping techniques, we can find a video - usually a plethora of videos - on the net.

So what sites are aiding us in our search for these videos? Here is a few sites to satisfy your "howto" craving:

• YouTube - most popular and widely known video viewing and sharing site
• Expert Village - how-to videos and articles from credentialed experts
• AOL Video - offers how-to videos from AOL Coaches, Sunset Magazine Look & Cook, Digital Lifestyle and TotalVid
• About.com Video Library - videos on wide range of categories
• VideoJug - how-to videos by experts and users
• Howto.tv - recently launched, newest edition to the online video sharing world

So what sites are you using to find "instructional" and"howto" videos?

SEO Digger a cool new SEO Tool - How does your site rank?

In February we blogged about the Firefox application SEO Quake, a cool tool that shows us Google Page Rank, Google Pages Indexed, Alexa Score, Site Age, Yahoo! Links etc. on the toolbar on the browser. The gang at SEO Quake just launched SEO Digger a cool new SEO tool that allows users to find out what position their site ranks in search engine results for important keywords.

Below is a screen shot using this cool new free tool for www.TenGoldenRules.com, I was pleased to learn we rank #1 in Google for 'online advertising consultant'





Give this free tool a try, how does your site rank?

The News 63 Years Ago

How often have you gone to the web or television to get instantaneous breaking news coverage? Or for that matter, have you received a Google News Update sent to your laptop or cellphone? Today many of us take advantage of this 24/7 coverage of not only the war in Iraq but also significantly less important news like Britney Spears shaving her head.
Wednesday marks the 63rd anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy and to honor this historic event XM Radio is broadcasting in real time the radio news bulletins of the invasion starting at 12:41am on their 40s channel, Channel 4. 63 years ago much of the country used the Radio or Newspaper to get their news, as TVs were not as prevalent. I am sure there are some people who remember the days before TV, or even Cable TV, there may even be a couple readers who don't remember days before the internet.
So go over to XMRadio, signup for a free no obligation trial, and try to see how long you can last listening to the real time broadcast without wanting to hop on CNN or Google News and try to get faster updates then the periodical news bulletins. I for one, know I could not last past the first news bulletin.