Marketing Pilgrim

If you could ask your favorite author anything, what would you ask? Would it be a question about how to become a best selling author? A query about the motivations of a character or something more personal like, what would you do if you found out your date had false teeth?

No question is off limits on Simon & Schuster’s Ask the Author page, but just cause you can ask, doesn’t mean you’ll get an answer. Unlike canned interviews of the past, this new program is set up so fans can leave a question for a particular author and get a video response back at a later date. You can also scan through a list of current questions and listen to the answers that have already been recorded. The whole thing is made possible by VYou.com and if you visit their webpage you’ll see how other businesses have used their conversational video software to connect with their readers and fans.

Remember the infamous ad from many moons ago by Charles Schwab that showed a room full of stock brokers being incentivized to sell a bad stock and the manager tells the team to “Put some lipstick on this pig” ? If you don’t check it out here.

Anyway, that expression is harsh for sure but I am beginning to wonder if one of Google’s concentrations these days, Places, is just another instance of a big company promoting a less than workable solution because it needs to. In other words, is Google putting lipstick on their Places pig?

They have put a pretty new landing page up for Places which looks nice. Check it out.

The SMB (small and medium business) market is working to keep pace with change in the marketing space as a whole and in particular, Internet marketing. It’s a difficult task for most due to the all too familiar chorus of not enough resources whether they be money, time, people or some combination of these and other factors.

According to a recent study from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat (via eMarketer) the SMB market is moving forward despite the obstacles. Twitter in particular is seeing strong growth while traditional marketing vehicles like the Yellow Pages are lucky to remain stagnant.

Here is a look at some of the stories that caught our attention over the past week but we may not have written about.

Just because we don’t cover something during the week doesn’t mean it isn’t important. It just means we don’t have the time to write about it all!

So enjoy a Pilgrim’s look back on the week that was.

Million dollar prize goes to building digital institute

Are old media companies stretching too far outside the box heading into the future?

Yahoo looking for an out from its Japan deal

BlackBerry Playbook tablet launches on April 10th. Will anyone care?

Bing Gets Into Kayak for Partnership

Ariana’s Rich and AOL’ers Are Out of Work

I will never again be anonymous, there will always be pictures of me in this costume floating around the net for as long as there is a net. And one of these days somebody’s going to come up with a way to synthesize 3D images from pictures on the internet and 3D models of me are going to float around space until there isn’t anymore.

The Tron Guy is right. For as long as there is an internet, he will be a part of it. This fact in itself, highlights the sometimes insane nature of the web. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that even the most illogical, and sometimes embarrassing content is now a permanent fixture in our ever evolving record of human history.

Do you know VABeachKevin? He’s a guy on Twitter who might answer your question if you’re confused about a product from Omniture. Funny thing is, he doesn’t work for the company. He’s just a guy who likes the product and likes to share what he knows. He’s a brand evangelist and his word is worth more than ten tweets from a salesman on the company Twitter.

Brian Watkins of Adobe has an interesting new webcast available that talks about how you can get your own VaBeachKevin, because seriously, we all need at least one like him.