Should You Bid All Brand Keywords To The First Position?

A common way of managing a brand in paid search results is to bid all brand terms to the first position. While this strategy may seem correct from a brand management standpoint, it misses out on many of the nuances of search engine marketing(SEM). For one, many brand campaigns contain over a 1,000 brand variations, [...]

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Use Transient PPC Campaigns To Support Branding Efforts

In today’s real-time brand management world, separate teams often control strategy and channel tactics for seo, PPC, public relations, online reputation management and social media. In many cases, however, out-of-box thinking and creative silo-breaking to cross traditional boundaries can yield sweet marketing fruit.
Today I’m going to explore the systematic use of paid channels like [...]

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Twitter Conferences Are In

As part of the Internet marketing industry have you done the conference circuit? Have you been to SES, SMX (put cardinal direction here), Adtech, PubCon etc, etc? On a yearly basis how many of these trips can you justify or get away with? Well, with shrinking budgets everywhere now you have to add the new spate of Twitter conferences to your hit list of things you absolutely have to do to get out of the office learn more about the industry.

TechCrunch tells us of the growing list of conferences that are starting to sprout up as a result of the use of (or confusion around the use of) Twitter for business purposes.

It looks like the trend of Twitter conferences is growing, with more events popping up around the country. As we’ve said in the past and will continue to say, there are tremendous opportunities for businesses, brands, non-profits and individuals to use Twitter as a tool for customer support, fund raising, brand management, advertising, job search and much more.

I have not attended one but I can imagine they must be pretty quiet because everyone is likely to be talking to everyone but those right in front of them. I gotta tell ya that when someone tweets that they are talking to someone I wonder if they are even listening to them or concentrating on their 140 characters of brilliance they are allowing the rest of their audience to ingest.

Of course, if you attended the 140 Character Conference in New York in June the venue itself (which was literally underground) forced Twitterheads to actually listen to others since there was practically no connectivity for the attendees.

Twitter is so fascinating in that it appears that so many folks are finding ways to monetize the service without the service monetizing itself. At least with Google (which face it, is why most of these conferences exist in the first place) makes money and knows that these conferences will only help it make more.

So if you are tired of the usual shows and you need more opportunities to ‘network’ then think about these:

• TWTRCN 09 DC- for non profits and government types. October 22 in Washington, DC.
• 140 Twitter Conference / LA – Endorsed by Biz Stone. Need we say more? September in Los Angeles (for those who didn’t get the LA part of the title).
• 140 Characters Twitter Conference – Jeff Pulver’s deal goes west coast on October 27th in Los Angeles.
• Cool Twitter Conferences- Apparently this is a traveling road show that has stops scheduled in Boston and San Francisco.

So don’t miss your chance to blow off work get out and learn more about Twitter and the future of communications. Hotel bars in the areas of these meetings can’t wait to serve you!

Twitter Putting the Kibosh on Pay for Followers Services?

Would you pay for more followers on Twitter? Apparently some people would—a few providers have found a way to monetize the popular microblogging site with selling more followers.

uSocial is one such service. For a mere $87, you can get 1000 new Twitter followers. uSocial made headlines recently when they claimed that Michael Jackson’s family bought the late pop star 25,000 more followers after his death. uSocial also claims to strive to match your profile to potential followers‘ interests, and to grow your Twittership over time—a far more organic approach than it sounds like on the surface (admit it—you were thinking they just had thousands of dummy accounts).

But soon, even that seemingly-legit kind of matchmaking may disappear from Twitter. CNET reports that uSocial says Twitter’s gunning for them as spammers.

uSocial issues a press release this morning to say that a brand management firm (MelbourneIT, according to Australian sources) contacted uSocial, concerned about spammy messages the company was sending on Twitter.

I’m sure that many Twitter users will chime in to say just how wrong the practice is—but at the same time, we all want more followers. I would totally understand Twitter taking action against a service using fake profiles to artificially inflate customers’ subscriber counts. While paying someone to find them for you is a shortcut, is it really abusing the system? Or is it worse to accuse uSocial of spamming (when they claim they’re not) and use that as an excuse to shut them down?

What do you think? Should uSocial be allowed to practice its services? Is Twitter using this as an excuse, or is uSocial really spamming?

SEMPO Institute Adds Summer Sessions

SEMPO’s SEMPO Institute, which launched in January 2007, has announced two new courses for the summer.
The new courses were added to the Effective Search Marketing online classes and are named “Linking and Brand Management” and “Social Media.” They cost $299 each and you can enroll for them over here.
Here are [...]

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Yahoo’s Branding Push Gets New Blood

For a while now there has been a lot of talk of the new and improved Yahoo. Since Carol Bartz took over as CEO there has been a more hopeful buzz around the company than back in the days of Jerry Yang.

One nagging question that keeps coming up is “What is Yahoo these days?”. Kara Swisher over at the WSJ’s All Things Digital has been keeping a watchful eye on this process. She has had some interesting conversations with Bartz and now tells of the latest addition to the team that will be leading the Yahoo of the future, Penny Baldwin.

Baldwin became an official Yahoo exec, as SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management.

Baldwin, said Yahoo (YHOO), “will lead the company’s global brand efforts, and is responsible for developing and executing Yahoo!’s brand marketing approach including brand management, corporate messaging, integrated marketing and advertising.”

Said Baldwin in a statement, signaling that Yahoo is poised for an important brand makeover: “This is a seminal moment for the Yahoo! brand and for the business overall.”

As with all things press release related, there is painting of a rosy picture and new opportunity on the horizon (Does anyone really pay attention to the fluff in press releases anymore? It’s really kind of ridiculous. Just the facts please.). Baldwin, who has significant experience at the highest levels of marketing, will be reporting to CMO Elisa Steele. She is replacing Allen Olivo who left Yahoo recently after serving as SVP of global brand marketing and her style is not very ‘Yahooesque’ in the traditional sense. What does that mean exactly?

…. unlike past Yahoo marketing execs, Baldwin has been described to me by many people at the company as much more colorful and bold in her style, and that she has been advocating more aggressive ideas about reinvigorating the Yahoo brand.

“Well, Penny is definitely not Yahoo,” said one Yahoo source, joking about the company’s quainter, yodel-focused and purple-toned image. “Which is probably a good thing.”

So we can expect some changes pretty quickly since the new Yahoo home page is slated for roll out in the fall time frame. There is plenty of work to be done to unify Yahoo’s image and put some shine back on a once high-flying brand that was a front runner and now is more of a reclamation project. As discussed in the past here, just trying to bring the many different Yahoo properties into a more cohesive social networking community is a substantial task from a logistical standpoint . As in many technology situations, it’s easy to outrun reality with marketing and hype so everyone would be better served to see how Yahoo works in reality rather than in the marketing hype that will likely trumpet it’s ‘new and cohesive’ community feel.

According to Swisher, one motto that is being thrown about is “your home on the web”. There are more apparently. Let’s hope so. If this is the new and dynamic road that Yahoo is embarking on then Ms. Baldwin certainly has her work cut out for her. I yawned halfway through that potential byline for the Yahoo brand. What else is out there, “This is not your father’s Yahoo!”?

Stay tuned. Yahoo is certainly at a critical juncture in its existence. There is so much potential that has been underutilized to this point, is there enough left in the tank to make Yahoo the Internet powerhouse it once was? How do you really view Yahoo? How do you use it? What services do you use in the Yahoo family? Do you even know what properties are owned by Yahoo?

Excuse me, however, I have to go check my Yahoo mail that I have had since forever. Maybe today I’ll look around some more and then again, since there is so much more on the Internet to pay attention to, maybe I won’t.