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Online Reputation Tool Serph Leaves Beta

posted on March 28, 2007

Back in January, we mentioned that Pronet Advertising had an online reputation monitoring tool, Serph, in open beta. Well, they don’t anymore. Cameron Olthuis has announced that Serph left beta today.

I thought I’d give it a whirl. I got 23 results for my full name. Number 21 and 22 were the first results from Marketing Pilgrim itself. Two of the top ten results are from domains that look like random strings of letters and numbers (which will not load in my browser).

Four of my top ten results are scraped content from one article I wrote for a client almost a year ago republished four times on the same blog (I suppose I’m lucky that they preserved my byline). One top tenner appears to be scraped from the one ranked right after it.

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Viacom Jumps on the Bandwagon

posted on March 28, 2007

CBS announced it was going mobile earlier this week, and now its former “corporate sibling,” Viacom, is following suit. Shows to be available streaming from Sprint include Nickelodeon’s “Spongebob Squarepants” and Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” I’m sure my sisters will be excited to watch MTV’s “The Hills” on their phones.

Other MTV, Comedy Central and VH1 content will also be available on their mobile websites as well as a new channel, GameTrailers.

Like CBS’s, their mobile video will be ad-supported, with advertisers including Pepsi and Intel. I agree with MediaPost’s Wendy Davis’s conclusion:

It’s understandable that Viacom doesn’t want to get left behind by technology, but curious that the company is wheeling and dealing in the nascent mobile video market at the same time that it’s warring with YouTube — a company that already delivers video in a format that everyone knows consumers want.

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You Need to Get Email Marketing Right

posted on March 28, 2007

If you’re doing email marketing, you really need to get it right. You need to start off on the right foot: around 80% of recipients will mark an email as spam based on subject line and sender alone, according to a survey conducted by the Email Sender and Provider Coalition. Trevor Hughes, executive director of the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, told ClickZ:

We found that four out of five folks are deleting or reporting messages as spam before even opening them. Consumers are tyrannical; they are brutal editors of their inbox. If your from and subject line is not showing who you are and the message is legit, you will never even be previewed.

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SEO and PPC, Live Together in Perfect Harmony…

posted on March 28, 2007

…side by side on my computer keyboard, oh Lord, why don’t we?

Ok, so maybe you’re didn’t enjoy my butchering of the McCartney/Wonder classic, but you might like to know that iCrossing has found great synergies between organic and paid search.

According to Rob Garner…

When appearing in both natural and paid search for the same keyword impression, clicks lifted 92 percent, actions lifted 45percent, orders lifted 45 percent, page views lifted 44 percent, visitors increased by 41 percent, and time on site increased by 40 percent.

I didn’t want to register for the full report, so I have no idea how large the study was, what type of web sites or any other juicy details. Still, if I were an SEM firm offering both SEO and PPC, I’d certainly use the above stats to convince clients why they need both…oh, wait, iCrossing probably already thought of that. ;-)

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New Prize Added to SEM Scholarship Contest

posted on March 28, 2007

We’re already starting to see entries come in for the second SEM Scholarship Contest, which is awesome considering the deadline is not until April 6th.

The prize package is already worth more than $10,000, but it’s about to get another considerable addition.

The grand prize winner will now receive a full pass to the fall session of SEO Class! The two-day seminar is restricted to just 50 participants and provides hands-on, one on one attention from search experts such as Todd Malicoat, Michael Gray, Rae Hoffman, Brad Geddes and Greg Niland!

The winner will have the chance to learn from the best, and network in a great environment.

Thanks to SEO Class for their generous donation.

So, what are you waiting for? Get you’re thinking-caps on and get writing!

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Google Video on Demand Coming to Your TV?

posted on March 28, 2007

Nothing creates more speculation on Google’s next products, than spying on their open job vacancies.

Digit Online is doing just that and, based upon what they’re seeing, makes some (not so) far-fetched predictions on Google’s television ambitions.

“The Google VOD [video on demand] experience is something that they could easily convince Comcast or Time Warner or Cox or insert cable provider here that that’s something they want to do,” [James McQuivey of Forrester] says.

Of course, we’ve seen this type of speculation many times before.

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How a Great Online Reputation Can Win You a Job

posted on March 28, 2007

Following up on the recent news, suggesting many recruiters use search engines to pre-screen job candidates, business social network Viadeo reports 20% of employers find information about candidates online and 59% are influenced by what they find.

As we pointed out, sharing your drunken exploits on MySpace, could come back to haunt you.

Examples of online information that has been shown to create negative information include MySpace pages that reveal excessive drinking or disrespect for work. One survey respondent said his company rejected a candidate based on activities found online that “did not fit ethically” into the organization.

However, it’s not all bad news. Having a good online presence can actually do a lot to help you get a job.