Bob Cefails Marketing Tips

Google recent acquisition of Feedburner - By Bob Cefail

It looks like the recent rumors have been confirmed- Google in its relentless acquisition to take over the world, has acquired or is in the process of acquiring Feedburner, a service that basically helps people promote and track the visitors of their blogs.

Google is watching you!

Now with Google Analytics (formerly Urchin), adding Feedburner to the mix will give Google lots of tracking tools both to optimize their existing services like adsense, but also to track visitors of every kind on the internet and monitor what they search for. We can only hope that Google will adhere to its own policy of "Don't be Evil"

My advice to people is to have their own tracking system in place that is a true 3rd party tracker, and to stop using Feedburner once the acquisition is complete. You do not want to buy your advertising and your tracking from the same person. This is like trusting your gas station to always give you a gallon of gasoline.

Uhhh... Trust, but verify!!!   Isn't that a good policy. Bob Cefail thinks so.

Until Next time

Bob Cefail

Search Giant Google Forgets to Add Search to New Spreadsheet App

Steve Rubel is not happy about this Google goof. After receiving one of the beta invites to test the new sharable spreadsheet app Steve noticed the complete lack of search.

What do YOU think? Should Google be excused for this? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Does your company really have teamwork?

Excellent article about the power of team work. Includes tips on building a great team, the team that made Motorola, the team the saved Sony, and six other teams that made history.

Read the article here.

New Ad Unit-1 Podcast Second

Remember MillionDollarHomepage.com where you could by ads space by the pixel? Well, someone is now selling seconds of their podcast.

Online-Ad Revenue Hits $4 Billion Q1

Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers is reporting a 38% year over year increase in online ad spend.

B2B Websites Fail in User Friendliness

Nielsen Norman Group (via DMnews) released a report revealing how un-user friendly B2B sites are. This should be a wake-up call to B2B marketers everywhere. The old school marketing hype tactics are dying because users are smarter now. They expect more from their user experience. The report sites convoluted content and navigation as big problems. The lack of rates and prices also annoyed users. I urge all B2B webmasters and site owners to take a long hard look at their own sites. Do you REALLY have your user in mind? Can they QUICKLY find what they need? Remember, humans are impatient, make your point quick and keep your site easy to use.

AdWords Feature: Dayparting, Scheduling

In the coming weeks Google will be adding scheduling features to AdWords. This is a very powerful new feature and will require that marketers pay more attention to date sensitive data in their analytics. If the feature become popular the momentum can cause a drastic drop in CPC's for advertisers who DO NOT use it.

5 Reasons You Must Utilize Search Engine Marketing

1. TRACKING YOUR R.O.I.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) can be tracked far better than some other forms of advertising. You track success of campaigns right down to the exact keyword or phrase a searcher typed in to find you. With the proper implementation of analytics software you can tweak your ROI more easily.

2. TESTING YOUR PERFORMANCE
In general, testing online advertising is easier than offline. But in the case of SEM it's even better. Test things on the fly and see what performed better.

3. PRE-QUALIFIED
Most searchers have ALREADY MADE A BUYING DECISION. They are using search engines to research vendors and products. Prospects from search are usually more qualified.

4. CONTROL
Because SEM is so flexible you have more control over your message. You can create a more relevant message to each of your targets.

5. INFORMATION WEALTH
Because there is such a big boom in SEM right now, there is a wealth of information to be found. SEM is not a mysterious as it used to be and much easier to jump in to.

Entering the blogosphere-Don't Rush In

Today I will continue to cover blogs. Though I am addicted to blogs, I never really covered them in this newsletter. I wasn't sure anyone shared my passion for them. But as time went on I have received more and more emails asking about blogs, RSS, and social media in general. Why am I noticing more interest in blogs? Why is my email being flooded with blog questions? I think it may be two fold. First off, some of you might be hearing a lot of buzz surrounding blogs and now you want to know the scoop. More and more news papers and magazines are covering the blog craze. Second, blogs are empowering. You can start one for free and begin publishing and syndicating your message in virtually no time at all. Last week I introduced you to some new terminology, all blog related, and called it The New Marketing Glossary. Hopefully I explained those new terms well and you are more comfortable with blogging. I'll dedicate most of this week to blog tips and tackle search engine marketing next week.

Summing up the blogosphere in a newsletter is impossible. So instead I have decided to guide you down a path so that you can better understand blogs on your own terms based on your own interests.

Blogs are not about overt marketing and hard sell. Blogs are not landing pages. Blogs are there to sell a person or a brand, (most likely person), that you can relate to. Blogging is a conversational medium powered by people, not quotas.

"But how do I use blogs for marketing??"

Blogs are about people, so is marketing. People like to talk, interact, and participate. Blogs facilitate those things by using transparency and casualness to create trust and develop authority. When people can trust you, relate to your style, and find valuable information they will be more likely to start a conversation with you. Blogs are great marketing tools because they are free, easy to understand and navigate, and ultimately put a human face on your brand (which is what all brands are trying to do anyway). Engage your public and compell them to interact, this is the key to blogging.

Conversation, Interaction, Participation
Don't rush into the blogophere. Take the time to play with it a little first. Start as a curious voyeur, get familiar with the lingo, and then move from there. Your first move should be to start reading some blogs and following them. Join the conversation, speak up by leaving comments or emailing the author. Blogs are all about conversation. Below are some of my personal favorite blogs about marketing...
http://www.micropersuasion.com/
http://www.adotas.com/
http://www.marketingvox.com/

After you start really reading blogs you'll find yourself sliding down the rabbit hole. Before you know it you have found many blogs all about a topic that concerns you. Comment on them, ask questions, interact. But how else can you interact with the blogophere? Why not find even more blogs! After you have read a few blogs and commented a bit you should make an effort to expand the horizon. Find blogs on other topics and read those. Later I'll teach you how to subscribe to these blogs with RSS so you don't have to visit each one. To find cool blogs and blog content your best bet is going to http://technorati.com/, a very popular blog search engine currently tracking 37.7 million sites and 2.4 billion links. You can search for keywords used inside posts, search for blogs about a certain topic, or search for posts that have been "tagged" by the author. Tags are just keyword the author uses to describe their post.

Participation is final step to joining the blogosphere. After you are comfortable with how the conversation works you should launch your own platform for spreading ideas. Here are two great, and very popular, blog platforms used, both with free versions: Blogger.com and Typepad.com

The New Marketing Glossary

Today I'll briefly go over some definitions of terms a lot of you have been asking about. Then I'll go over what to expect from next week. Remember, this newsletter is here to help you, so communicate your concerns or questions. Email me at bruce@intouchmediagroup.com with questions or suggestions.

I have been getting a lot of questions from consultants and publicists about blogging and RSS. Next week we will delve more deeply into these technologies. But first, I think we need to define them. Bloggers are quickly developing their own language and I hope to clear it up for you here.

BLOG
Short for "web log". A blog is more like a journal than a website. What makes a blog a blog is continuous updates, casual writing style, easy archiving and organization of posts, and the ability to syndicate content via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Some blogs also enable COMMENTS and TRACKBACKS (which we will get to in a moment).

RSS
RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication. It is built on top of a technology called XML. Basically blogs are formatted to have design and content separated. Meaning that while you see a blog rendered much like a website with graphics, text, and other goodies, in the background the CONTENT and DESIGN elements are being pulled from two different places. That way, they can be easily separated without hassle. RSS takes just the content and puts it in a standard simple format. There are tools called RSS Readers or Feed Readers that can take RSS from a site and display it. The power of this is simple: instead of visiting my favorite blogs to check if there is new content, I simply subscribe to the RSS Feed in my reader. Now when I open up my reader (I use netvibes) all the new content from my favorite blogs is syndicated to me automatically.

CORPORATE BLOGGER
There are blogs covering all sorts of topics from all sorts of people from all over the world. But 2005 was the rise of the "corporate blogger". These are professionals that cover, much like journalists or editors, their industry. They are very well versed in their field and usually pretty tech savvy as well. The reason the corporate blogger has become so popular is because it raises trust in the public for their brand or company. They are real people, with real ideas, that have blogs with real typos and real opinions. You can think of these blogs as clear windows into the company. The refreshing honesty, and insight, of the corporate blogger is the main reason for the buzz behind blogs right now. Plus blogs are an excellent, and usually free, marketing and PR tool.

COMMENTS
One of the most powerful things that occur when blogging is "the conversation". Blogging not only allows easy publishing for the bloggers, but easy interaction with their audience through commenting. Most bloggers allow comments on their page. As a reader, you can read a blog and comment on certain posts. Sometime you can have many comments under one post and now there is a "conversation" going on the topic. There are many instances where the blogger interacts with the commenters in the comment section as well.

TRACKBACKS
Trackbacks are similar to comments in that they help encourage and track the "conversation". Trackbacks are for other bloggers who are putting in their two cents, but not through comments...through their own blogs instead! Most bloggging software allows you ping, or trackback, to other posts on someone else's blog. If I read a post on Bob's blog there are two ways I can join the conversation. First, if I only have a quick blurb or suggestion or comments I can leave a comment on his post within his blog. But if I had a lot to say, or if I myself was already covering this topic on my blog, I could send a trackback to his post from mine and connect them. You can view trackbacks to a post and see what other bloggers are saying on their blogs about this same subject. Think of it as a "remote comment".

Next week we will talk more about blogging and how to start engaging the blogoshpere, your customers, potential prospects, and how to join the conversation.

Also, don't forget about MarketingPULSE, our new marketing news site. You can submit news, articles, and advice from anywhere and have the community vote on the best news. MarketingPULSE is the easy way to find the hottest news on SEO, SEM, PR, and Marketing.