Marketing Pilgrim

After yesterday’s firestorm, I feel the need to clarify a few things and then explain what I mean by branding.

1) Was I linkbaiting? No. Telling the truth as I see it even when it is unpopular is not necessarily linkbaiting. I do have a small gift for provocative titles though.

2) Do I really believe what I said? Yes, every word. Some people seem to find it stunning that I would actually believe what I wrote. Trust me when I say I do believe it.

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In a May 6th article published by the Associated Press, Bill Gates was quoted as saying “The Internet has been operating now for 10 years,”… “The second 10 years will be very different.”

Being a bit of an Internet history buff, I cringed to read such a powerful figure in the world of computing being quoted as effectively saying that the Internet has been operating since 1998.

Since I started my first Internet job in 1996, I was pretty sure Bill was wrong.

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InternetRetailer.com reports that the highest conversion rates among major online retailers during March were the following:

Office Depot - 20.9%
QVC - 19%
VistaPrint - 18.3%
Roamans - 18.1%
Lands’ End - 16.2%
eBay - 15.7%
1-800-Flowers.com - 15.5%
eBags.com - 15.3%
L.L. Bean - 14.6%
Pottery Barn Kids - 14.2%

These conversion rates are through the roof when compared with industry averages. In fact, they are not even believable unless you understand what the most important driver of conversion is.

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By Jon Rognerud

Quick!

What is the hottest social media tool to emerge on the scene this year? It’s ‘Twitter’, and you may get hooked too…

I recently came back from a fully packed conference on social media marketing, the Danny Sullivan SMX show in Long Beach, CA, and all-the-rage was Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that many at first (typically) considered a ‘joke’ or maybe just a temporary fad. They (we) were all wrong, but most agreed that using any tool or technique without a reasonable strategy was a missed opportunity.

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I confess I am feeling a bit uneasy these days. These are interesting times to be in retail. Having been in business back in 2001, I know what a recession is like, but I also know that it is possible to survive and even flourish during bad times.

I remember sitting at my desk one morning going about business as usual. I happened to check Drudge and saw headlines that the World Trade Towers had been hit. At the time, I had just quit a consulting position and hired my first employee. My business was profitable but just barely.

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By Shannon Lilly.

Article Marketing is a practice that no webmaster, blogger or Internet marketer should go without doing. Even if you’ve never written a single thing in your life, you can benefit from article marketing. Read through this mini “how-to” on article writing and if you still think you can’t do it, I’ll give you some options to get your article written. But I have faith that you can do it if you just take the time!

Building links

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"Customer engagement" appears to be the latest trend in online marketing. If you can just figure out how to hold a conversation with your customer, get them to spread the word to their friends, and keep them coming back for more, your revenues will skyrocket.

But, ask a dozen different people to define "customer engagement" and you’ll get a dozen different answers.

Denise Shiffman will tell you that simply launching a blog or joining a social network doesn’t mean you’re engaging your customers. In The Age of Engage (aff), she explores what it takes to connect and collaborate with those that do business with you.

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In Radically Transparent, we explain why you should monitor your online reputation 24/7. In fact, it’s so important, that if you can figure out how to monitor it 25/8, you should absolutely do so.

But, it’s one thing to know how important reputation monitoring is–and which tracking tools to use–but what “reputations” should you monitor exactly? You should already know the importance of monitoring your personal name and company brand, but here’s a list of 12 items every company should track.

1. Your Personal Name

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comScore reports that more people are searching for auto insurance quotes online. It also looks like people are more influenced by paid search than natural search results. The queries for auto insurance quotes were up more than 35% in 2007.

There were nearly 9 million search-referred auto insurance quotes made in 2007. More than one-quarter of were made through a search engine. The overall growth for online auto insurance queries increased only 15%.

If you’re in the auto insurance industry, here is some advice: rather than advertise your company name, like “Geico” use generic terms, like “car insurance quote.”

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This is tip #2 in my series of “Blog Marketing Tips Even the ProBloggers Won’t Share” series. See tip #1: How to Optimize Blog Post Titles.

In tip #1 I warned that changing your blog post slugs–also known as permalinks or post URLs–is to be avoided, once you’ve published your blog post. While you can use 301 redirects if you do need to change your slug–more on that later–even that can have an unfortunate effect on your post’s ranking in Google.

In this tip, I want to share with you a practice that I often use here on Marketing Pilgrim–optimizing my slugs before I hit “publish.”

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There are a lot of smart people out there, you just need to know where to find them. While you’re waiting for the start of the 3rd Annual SEM Scholarship Contest, you can take in these great "how to" articles and perhaps get an idea for your entry.

• I’ll admit to not using many keyboard shortcuts with Gmail. Dennis O’Reilly explains how my life would be a lot easier if I followed his Gmail advice.
• Getting your site banned on Google is not a fun thing, but is it really banned? Mark Jackson has some tips for making sure your site is truly banned, before panicking.

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You can’t blame the NYT for its weekend piece entitled "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop." The article isolates a couple of unfortunate deaths in the blogging community, then selects a handful of juiced-up bloggers to prove it’s theory that blogging can lead to bad health, or even death.

Why can’t you blame the NYT? The newspaper is a mainstay of traditional media and everyday it "wakes-up" to find another hot new blog–with attention grabbing headlines–chipping away at its readership. It’s not that the Times wants to take pot shots at bloggers, it’s just that it thinks that, by writing controversial articles, it can get a pass to the bloggers’ lounge.

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