Marketing Pilgrim

Man, hardly a week goes by without the European Union getting after some Internet behemoth for bad business practices or invading individuals’ privacy, or both. Usually it’s Google on the receiving end, but this time it’s social networks that are getting scrutiny from the supranational regulator.

As Facebook begins testing greater and greater publicity, with user controls, the EU begins demanding more and more of social networks’ privacy policies—or, that’s what we think their vague regulations are trying to do, anyway.

There are several specific policies that social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, which both have large European audiences, will have to comply with: automatically setting users’ privacy to the highest level (giving users the option to opt out of that extreme level of privacy), allow users to limit the data shared with third-parties (including advertisers and applications), and limit the use of “sensitive information,” including race, religion and political views, in behavioral targeting.

This week, Facebook announced some coming changes to your status updates. Soon, just like with Twitter, you’ll have the option to make them public—but not just to everyone on the world’s most popular social network, but everyone around the world. (You know, with Internet access.)

Because this feature is being implemented on the Facebook Publisher, you can add more to your newsstream than just text updates and links. The buttons below the text area allow you to add photos, videos and announcements or other integrations from your apps that have integrated with the publisher.

Facebook also gave an in-depth explanation of each level of access:

• Everyone: Anyone, on or off, of Facebook can see it.

We’ve just posted the second round of entries to our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. They are:

• You Know You Work In Search When You…
• 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started as an Internet Marketer
• Why Iran, Perez Hilton, and The US Open relate to SEO
• Game Changing Principles – Enabler SEO
• 9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design
• How to Write Hundreds of Unique Articles from One Article with MS Excel – Article Theme Versioning

That’s all the entries for this year. Remember, the entries have 4 weeks from the date of publication to try and qualify as one of our five finalists.

I hope you’ll read the posts–you might even learn something new!

By Chelsea Blacker

You know you work in search when you:

1. have more logins than you do pairs of socks.

2. friended Danny Sullivan before you met him.

3. don’t think you’re a Cuttlet.

4. typically have at least 3 different browsers open simultaneously.

5. have considered dating a college student/education professional to get links.

6. grocery shop and think “my average CPC is higher than that apple/steak/wine bottle.”

7. get really excited when your map overlay is light green in a 3rd world country.

8. look for house numbers 404 and 300 with the same enthusiasm as house 69.

9. receive grammatically incorrect emails form India offering to write you copy.

By Chris Tynski

For anyone who’s joined and had success in the Internet Marketing world, there are likely a great number of things you have learned over the years that allow you to be successful today.

This list is compiled from my own experience with Internet marketing,  it consists of the top 5 lessons I’ve learned in 3 areas of Internet Marketing that I believe are essential to success.

These areas include:

Mentality/Frame of Mind

Business Direction

and Marketing Technique.

Mentality:

1. Fake it till you make it.

When you start out with Internet Marketing, you WILL be overwhelmed.   The breadth and depth of this field is staggering, and it’s changing every day.  Don’t let this deter you. Trust that you will eventually “get it” , it will come together, and you will begin to see the big picture soon enough.

By Frankie Fredericks

“There is only now.”  Eckhart Tolle

A common problem for those who have already optimized their website, and have created a wide array of content across social media outlets and networks is how to fight the traffic stagnation that comes after the initial launch of your comprehensive search engine optimization and online marketing campaign.  The key to fighting this is as true in traditional marketing as it is in search engine optimization and management.  This key is relevancy.

Whether you are selling a product or service, promoting a mission, campaigning for a politician, or just pushing for internet PR, you must cater to the impeding change of focus from static content of websites to fresh content available on blogs and social networks.  Such things as Twitter Trends and blog search engine WhosTalkin.com.  In short, your content must be relevant to now, as in THIS MOMENT.