Marketing Pilgrim

Not long ago we got word that a new search engine will launch in May that will rely heavily on Natural Language Processing (NLP). And we have even heard Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, hint that the search giant would be implementing a greater emphasis on NLP:

Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in that phrase? We have a lot of discoveries in that area that are going to roll out in the next little while. (via)

Pete Blackshaw wants to help you find your customers’ “love spot” and his new book will help you do just that–on page 97, to be precise!

No, he didn’t just author a sex manual, but he did recently publish the excellent Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World and he’s given us 3 copies to give away in a contest!

Blackshaw’s book is a great compliment to my own Radically Transparent and we share similar advice–and even explore some of the same case studies. If you’re looking to broaden your online reputation management knowledge, then this book will be a good addition to your library!

Forrester Research just released a report that suggests the tough economy will be the catalyst for more spending on social media marketing.

The survey of 145 interactive marketing professionals snuggles-up nicely with cScape’s research published in December that suggested companies will focus more on customer engagement in 2009.

Highlights from the report authored by Jeremiah Owyang include:

• 53% of interactive marketers expect their budgets for social media marketing to increase as a response to the recession.
• Social media budgets remain miniscule compared to the rest of interactive marketing. Three-quarters of marketers say their social media spend is $100,000 or less over 12 months.
• Social media is not yet a marketing line item. 45-percent of marketers say their social budgets are determined as needed and 23-percent say they scrape together funds from wherever they can find them.

The news is out about Robert Scoble’s new job: he’s working for me!

Ahem, OK, so not exactly. But, the infamous tech journalist is taking a new job with the hosting company Rackspace and I am a long-time Rackspace client–hence he’s kinda working for me.

Scoble will head up a new effort called Building 43 which he explains "is not a place. It’s not even a website. It’s a decentralized community for people fanatical about the Internet. You’ll find us on Facebook, on Twitter, on friendfeed, on Ning, and lots of other places too."

With Internet marketers putting the squeeze on budgets the search for the magic bullet to attract new customers continues. MediaPost gives some insight on a Merkle report that says that e-mail still is attractive to marketers but the perception from those on the receiving end may be changing as well.

The report talks about how inboxes are getting more and more cluttered with marketing messages. After looking over the findings it appears as if the direction that e-mail recipients are heading is toward having had enough of the practice. I know how I react to e-mails that I have opted – in to receive. I take a brief look at the subject line and if it is not something that can make me slow down for a second it’s deleted. Not to say that my behavior is normal but I suspect that the patience level on these techniques is waning.

In Internet years it was about 100 years ago (human years only 3) that Yahoo closed down its initial foray into the world of video production for the web. Does anyone remember it? I don’t but that’s just me. Apparently the ambition to produce TV quality shows for the Internet was expensive and was pretty much an unmitigated failure as reported in the New York Times. No harm, no foul in this industry, really, since everything is an experiment to some degree.

So since that time Yahoo has been content to distribute content. They are still producing some video offerings but they are letting them grow more organically rather than push them aggressively to the Yahoo community at large.