Posted under Online Marketing

SearchEngineLand recently published “a list of things that small businesses can be thankful for — one for each letter of the alphabet — this Thanksgiving. These are things that can make the difficult challenge of online marketing a little easier for any small business.” I’ve went through the list and find it a great resource for small business owners. You can find the exact list, word-for-word (as found on SEL’s blog) below:

A: Analytics – It wasn’t too long ago that a full-featured analytics package was out of budgetary reach for a lot of small businesses. But thanks to Google Analytics (and, hopefully, Yahoo Web Analytics when it launches publicly), small business owners now have access to the type of data that only their deep-pocketed competition could previously afford.

B: Blogs – Have you noticed in my ongoing “Small Business Success Stories” series here on Search Engine Land how often a blog plays a major role in a successful online marketing campaign? Element One Photography, real estate agent Teresa Boardman, and Avante Gardens are just three examples of successful small business blogs.

C: Common Craft – “Explanations in plain English” is the tagline for this video-making company that takes somewhat complicated ideas/services/tools and brings them to the masses. RSS in Plain English is their most popular work so far, and a great primer for small businesses who don’t quite “get” why RSS is so great.

D: DomainTools.com – It’s not the best place to brainstorm domain ideas for your small business, but DomainTools is the best place to do competitive research on domains that have already been registered.

E: Education – From Search Engine Land to Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and the countless other excellent web marketing sites, getting an online education is pretty easy. Is there another industry in which the best in the business consistently share their wisdom so openly?

F: Firefox – Any small business owner wanting to become a do-it-yourself search marketer can thank the Firefox web browser and its countless plug-ins that put a wealth of SEO data at your fingertips.

G: Geotargeting – There are almost 20 cities named Columbus in the USA. Those dentists in Columbus, Ohio, sure don’t want their ads being clicked on by searchers in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Texas. We overlook it, but the ability to geotarget ads is a real blessing for small business owners.

H: HitTail – It’s not the only analytics-type service you should use, but with almost-real time tracking of sites and keywords that send visitors to your site, HitTail is a great complement to your primary web stats program.

I: iStockphoto – A great photo or image can dramatically improve any piece of content, no matter how well written it is. iStockphoto offers an amazing collection of images, many of which can be purchased for web, blog, e-book, or similar uses for just a couple dollars.

J: Junk Mail Filters – Be glad that you can filter away all those “Submit your web site to 5,000 directories” and “We’ll put you at #1 on Google for $49.95 per month” emails. They’re useless and should be ignored at all costs.

K: Keyword Research Tools – Whether it’s Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, or one of the many others, keyword research tools seem to get more powerful every year while still staying affordable for small business owners.

L: Local Search – All three main search engines offer local search business listings, and countless other local/social directory sites bring value to small businesses, too. Add it all up, and local search is the best way for local businesses to connect with local customers.

M: Matt Cutts – You may not like all of Google’s policies, but give credit where it’s due. Small business owners can be thankful that Matt’s blog offers a direct window into Google’s anti-spam and search quality efforts.

N: Networking – When you start a new small business, the first piece of advice you’ll get is to join the Chamber of Commerce. Why? Networking. It’s how you meet local people who might become customers or business partners and help you grow your business. Small business owners can also network online thanks to social media sites with local networking opportunities.

O: Onebox – Thanks to Google’s local search onebox, a small business now has an extra ten chances to show up on page one of Google’s SERPs.

P: PPC – For many small businesses, there’s no better and faster way to get search engine visibility than a well-planned PPC campaign. Pay-per-click advertising can bring in targeted traffic while you’re waiting out those weeks or months for your SEO campaign to bring results.

Q: Quality Over Quantity – Small businesses can be thankful that, when it comes to content and links and competing in local search, it really is about quality over quantity. With a few exceptions, you probably don’t need to go out and find hundreds or thousands of links; a few high-quality links should be enough.

R: Reviews – No small business owner likes getting bad reviews, but progressive small business owners know that it’s smart to embrace online reviews and encourage happy customers to write reviews. Searchers rely on reviews to make buying decisions, and local search algorithms look at ratings when determining rank order.

S: Social Media – Many small business owners don’t quite understand social media, but there are numerous ways for any small business to succeed with social media.

T: Tools – Using the right SEO toolbox can give any small business a big advantage over the competition. But it’s important to remember that tools can’t make decisions for you; that’s your job.

U: Unleashed – Geared specifically to small business owners, the Small Business Marketing “Unleashed” conference has quickly become a must-attend event for both its educational and networking opportunities.

V: Video – Video used to be something that only Big Companies could afford, but today there are numerous companies bringing affordable video marketing to the small business sector. And with blended search results becoming more widespread, videos can be an effective tool for attracting new traffic and customers.

W: Webmaster Central – It’s not just the tools and data you get from having a Google Webmaster Central account that matters; equally important is the fact that GWC provides a direct line of communication between small businesses and their primary source of natural search traffic. The communication aspect is highly underrated, but something to be very thankful for.

X: Xenu – Give thanks to Xenu Link Sleuth, which advertises itself as a tool for checking broken links, but really provides so much more link information than that.

Y: Yahoo Site Explorer – With Google and MSN both neutering their public link reporting tools, Yahoo Site Explorer offers the best free, straight-from-a-search-engine snapshot of a site’s indexing and inbound links.

Z: Zappos – Any small business that thinks social media, and Twitter especially, are useless as business/marketing tools need only look at what Zappos is doing. They’ve become the poster child for how to connect with customers online.

©2008 Third Door Media, Inc.

Have a happy thanksgiving and thanks again to SearchEngineLand for providing me with great content and an easy way out of having to blog pre-thanksgiving. For more about SearchEngineLand, check out their parent company ThirdDoorMedia.com, creators of SMX, Sphinn and SearchMarketingNow.

Posted under Blogs, Social Networks, Ultra Light Startups

“Is it just me, or has YouTube gone widescreen?” Just do a search on youtube wide in Google and you’ll get an endless list of blog posts (including this one). YouTube has apparently changed all videos on its site to play in widescreen by default, and not the standard ratio of 4:3. They’ve had the option to go widescreen in the past, but now it’s their Default. As a result, most of the videos have these horizontal black bars on the sides. Check out JagerBomb video to see what I mean. (Take note, that is how Jager Bombing is supposed to happen!)

According to the YouTube Blog article Bigger Isn’t Always Better… But in This Case, We Believe It Is, this is what they had to say:

“Over the years we’ve heard a lot of feedback from you about what you’d like to change about YouTube, and the size of our video player is always top of mind. That’s why today we’re excited to announce a bigger YouTube player. We’re expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience.”

I’m not really sure what they’re doing. Maybe they’re playing the game of ‘catch up to the competitors’. Just a few days ago YouTube went Live! and now they’re going Widescreen. According to TechCrunch “YouTube is by no means the first video site to go widescreen – Blip.tv (my favorite YouTube alternative) has long had the feature. And as the comments point out, sites like Vimeo and SmugMug already offer video in HD”. (TechCrunch)

You know what doesn’t make any sense? When you embed the video on other sites, it maintains the 4:3 ratio! Well, one thing is for sure, YouTube is making improvements and the world is noticing!

Posted under Online Video, Social Networks

LinkedIn's New & Improved Search Capability

LinkedIn just released another improvement to their UI that allows you search all areas of LinkedIn…wait a second…I was able to do this before!! From what it looks like, they made some small changes to their search accuracy and decided to promote that as “New and Improved”. But who am I to get mad at them for tricking me into thinking “oh wow! another new feature”? I mean, all month they have been implementing changes including one of my favorites, LinkedIn Applications.

This is a great example of web-marketing and engaging your users. They took a rather minute change and informed their users. This is great for marketing. Imagine if you made a small change to your web-site and then left a flag by it letting your users know it was “NEW & IMPROVED”. It has been used time and time again by many large companies. I saw an interesting response to the following question on a  Yahoo! Answers forum:

Q: Why do they say ‘New and Improved’? How can it be new if it was improved?

A: It is part of marketing. Why would someone want to buy a “improved” ipod if they already have one, for instance. But, if they say “new and improved” hey i don’t have that 1. Its just another way to make a few more dollars. (or millions

This is a worthy marketing tactic and it took something minutes liked LinkedIn’s “New” search capabilities to get me to actually notice this approach. Let me know if it works (or ever worked) for you or your company.

Posted under Social Networks

Organic Light Emitting Diode’s (OLED) are finding their way into our cell phones. OLED’s are easy to make – all you need is a special printer – and can be used in television screens, computer displays, small, portable system screens such as cell phones and PDAs, advertising, information and indication. They also have many  significant benefits over the traditional Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD): Their flexible, they draw far less power, can operate longer on the same charge and can be much thinner than an LCD panel.Everything here screams: “PLEASE! PUT ME ON A CELL-PHONE”. Just think…your battery will last longer, you’re screen can be flexible and skinnier than other models. But who would be crazy enough to do such a thing?

I’m glad you asked, b/c Samsung seems to be hot on the trail, being the first to implement these technologies into a cell phone. Oled-Info.com published an article with a video of the new Samsung mobile phone prototype with a flexible OLED display. As cell-phones start to incorporate larger screen technology and faster connection speeds, mobile advertising will undoubtably grow as a result. Check out the video below. Can you smell the ad-dollars??

Posted under Online Marketing

Today I received an alarming e-mail from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) with a link to their press-release that read the following:

“NEW YORK, NY (November 20, 2008) — The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and  PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008″

That’s only a 11% increase from Q3 ‘07 and only a 2% increase from the Q2 ‘08. I remember when the Q1 ‘08 report came out, I wrote an article titled “IAB Q1 ‘08 Report in Perspective“. 1/2 a year later and if you look at the graph above, you’ll see very little growth…more like a “bunny hill” than anything else.

“The growth of interactive advertising that we’ve been experiencing over the past few years has stabilized due in large part to the difficult current economic climate,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB.”(IAB)

Now that the Retail industry is predicting huge cuts in online spending, the Automotive industry in shambles,”the fourth quarter could see an actual decline in both U.S. and global growth.” (TechCrunch) Bear in mind this is highly speculative and there are more factors out there than our current economic situation. Online marketers are coming up with highly innovative and revenue generating cost-effective methods that may help fix this “situation”. Keep your fingers crossed, hold on tight, and hope Q4’s report is nothing more than a bunny-hill.

Posted under Online Marketing

I learned something new about Blogging today. I made a mistake and must learn from it. Learn from my mistake: I didn’t think to blog about “Gmail Customizable Themes” when I was given access before anyone else yesterday. I called a few friends and they all responded “How can I get it? How did you get it?” I should have know that things like that are extremely valuable in the blogging world. Just check out TechCrunch’s article Gmail Themes. That’s Totally Ninja. They openly said “Thanks for the tip Dan” to a guy who sent in a screen-shot. I bet Dan is getting huge amount of traffic for being providing TechCrunch with that tip. Hats off to you Dan!

So what did I learn about Blogging today? When something new, innovative and long awaited comes out and you’re only one of a few with access…BLOG ABOUT IT! There ya go. Learn from this event. Now for your viewing pleasure, check out my theme’s screen-shot below. I decided to go with the “Shiny” Theme:

Posted under E-Mail

For the best review of the the new Blackberry Storm, there is no better place to go than TechCrunch’s CrunchGear. They do a fantastic job covering every issue and comparing it to the iPhone 3G and Blackberry Bold’s capabilities.

If you’re like me and work forces you to stick with the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), then it’s not easy to jump to iPhone knowing you’ll lose work e-mail connectivity. The exchange server forwards just don’t cut it! So it really comes down to the New Bold or the Storm, AT&T vs. Verizon…mono vs mono…which is why this review is extremely important. Click the picture below to check it out for yourself:

Posted under Blogs