Monday, June 16, 2008

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Pilgrim’s Picks for June 16

Posted: 16 Jun 2008 09:05 AM CDT

Nothing like a lunchtime flight to LAX to ensue you make the most of your morning. While I rush around like a headless chicken, you can enjoy the soothing words of today’s Picks.

  • Carl Icahn believes the Yahoo/Google deal “might have some merit.” Let’s hope so, because if he pushes forward with his proxy battle, it might trip a “change of control provision” allowing Google to walk away from the deal.
  • It seems Google is developing tools that will allow you to monitor your broadband speed–so you’ll know if your ISP is throttling your connection.
  • You can now upload, view, print and share your PDF documents on Google Docs. No editing or creation tools at this time.
  • Russia’s largest search engine Yandex is acquiring SMIlink, a Russian data collection company.
  • Frank Reed shares a real-life example of why local businesses need to manage their online reputation and also provides some valuable tips.
  • You can now download the Google toolbar for Firefox 3.

Pilgrim’s Update: Save 34% off Andy’s new book - Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online

The Associated Press: FAIL!

Posted: 16 Jun 2008 08:15 AM CDT

If you happen to have a life outside of the internet, you likely missed the blogstorm this weekend over the Associated Press’s attempts to force the Drudge Retort to stop quoting AP stories–it even sent a cease and desist letter to the blog.

Well, how do you think the blogosphere reacted to that? Yep, you guessed it. Just about everyone, who’s not AP, went on the attack, accusing the AP of being out of its mind and trying to re-define the legal definition of “fair use.”

Now, it would have been different, if the AP was trying to stop a blogger from scraping all of its news articles, but we’re talking about seven items, with quotes less than 80 words!

The NYT reports the AP is backtracking, but only so that it can re-group, take a breather and then try again to prevent bloggers from quoting its articles.

"We don't want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this," Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.

That’s all well and good, but in the meantime, many bloggers are taking their own action against the Associated Press. Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has declared a ban on AP…

So here's our new policy on A.P. stories: they don't exist. We don't see them, we don't quote them, we don't link to them. They're banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.

Which certainly has me thinking about how Marketing Pilgrim should respond.

Should we abide by any new guidelines issued by the AP? Should we continue to quote the AP, using our own interpretation of what is “fair use” not AP’s? Or, like TechCrunch, should we jump on the “ban” wagon and never quote AP again?

What do you think we should do?

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

MarketingSherpa Discusses Small Business and Online Marketing – It’s About Time

Posted: 16 Jun 2008 07:48 AM CDT

By Frank Reed.

In today's Wall Street Journal , Stephan Tornquist of MarketingSherpa, Inc. discusses the importance of small business and marketing during the current downturn. I don't like to use the word recession because it seems like every time the word is printed people believe more and more we are in doom and gloom times. Self fulfilling prophecies of this kind should be avoided.

Sure, times are tougher with gas and everything on the rise but does that mean that small business marketing just has to be put in neutral and wait it out? During a survey conducted in February and March of this year (which in internet terms seems like a decade ago) the folks at MarketingSherpa found the following that companies of 100 employees or less (which is the majority of firms in the US) fell into three main categories:

  1. Putting their marketing efforts on hold before budget changes
  2. Taking this time as one of opportunity
  3. Pulling back on their marketing budgets

As a small business owner myself I can see an argument for all three options and it will be very dependent upon an individual firm's situation but if the budget exists I would have to encourage option 2. Tornquist goes on to give the traditional argument for search because of its efficiencies, measurability and manageability. While this is not anything earth shattering to those in the internet marketing industry it is STILL news to small business owners.

There is still a lot of fear of the unknown for the small business person regarding search marketing in particular. I don't think the search industry as a whole has done a good enough job of outreach to these businesses. The stories with most search marketing media are on the big boys (Internet Retailer 500 types etc) but that's actually a small part of the story. Since about 95% of the businesses in the US is defined as small why aren't there more local / small players taking advantage of search?

One refreshing insight from Tornquist was his expansion on the idea of conversions, content and usability as the focus of search campaigns rather than traffic. Since many small business folks are new to search they may have a somewhat outdated idea of traffic being the only important factor in search. While it means something for sure it's the right traffic that brings bottom line results to the small business owner.

If you are a search marketing provider the small business community needs your expertise. Adjust your programs to accommodate these folks (without sacrificing quality of course) and help be a part of the solution during this recess ……. Oooops……. I meant downturn.

About Frank Reed

Frank Reed is a partner at bnr marketing in Raleigh, NC. bnr provides SEO, PPC and blog marketing services.  In addition, bnr produces SEO tools like SEMCheck for the search marketing industry. Frank's blog on internet marketing is at www.frankthinking.com.