Yeah, time to fix that!

We’ve got 3 copies of Brian Carter’s The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money With Facebook to give away to Marketing Pilgrim readers. Barely two months old, Brian’s book is already garnishing high praise–and 5 stars–on Amazon. If you know Brian, you know that he’s a pro when it comes to Facebook marketing and in The Like Economy, he promises to provide:

• Clear, up-to-date answers about how Facebook can help their companies make money
• Specific guidance on using Facebook to support and supercharge existing marketing programs
• Detailed insights for crafting Facebook programs that reflect their unique products, services, and customers
• Key marketing and persuasion skills you can use across all of digital marketing
• Up-to-the-minute techniques for attracting super-cheap, targeted clicks and fans with Facebook ads
• Indispensable help with creating pages that repel negative “brand-bashers”
• Proven solutions for increasing visibility, deepening customer interactions, and translating community into profits

Want a copy? Of course you do!

How to enter this contest: Simply leave a comment below and we’ll randomly pick 3 winners (deadline for entry is 10am ET this Thursday Feb 2nd).

That’s all you need to do! And, if you don’t win, you can grab a copy from Amazon.com

Winners:

• D.T. Pennington
• Mike Hale
• Melissa Doyle

Pubcon

Now the joy-o-meter just cranked up to 11, with Pubcon Paradise! Yes, my favorite conference is now heading to my favorite destination in the world….Hawaii! And Marketing Pilgrim readers can save 20% off registration until Feb 7!

February 14-15, at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki is the location for the must-attend event. And, how can you not go? Especially when you can tell your spouse you are taking them to Hawaii for Valentines!

The conference will have a strong travel and toursim focus, but broad enough that any marketer will walk away with their head spinning with awesome SEO, PPC, Social & Affiliate marketing tactics.

So, what are you waiting for? There’s still time to register and if you do so by Feb 7, you can save 20% with this discount code:

mp-4529120

P.S. If you need help planning your Hawaii trip, I know a web site that can help you with that!

Well, it must be the cooler temperatures, because I have just approved a FREE Gold Pass to PubCon Vegas to anyone that prepays for four months of our Ultimate plan.

Here’s the math on that:

• $1508 for 4 months of our butt-kicking, fully white-labeled, unlimited everything, Ultimate monitoring plan.
• We then give you a Gold Pass to PubCon Vegas (Nov 8-10) worth up to $1499.
• Then, we spend the remaining $9 to buy you a drink when you sit down with me for a private one-on-one session at PubCon to talk about reputation management, monitoring, SEO, or how I learned to play the ukulele. Anything really!

My accountant might have me institutionalized for this, so you’d better grab your free pass before they’re gone.

Here’s how to get your free pass to PubCon.

Still, like others, we’re not quite sure whether we like or hate their new design–and new logo. Of course, no one likes their favorite web sites when they change–just ask Facebook or Twitter!

So, instead of adding to the many critics, we thought we’d pay homage to TechCrunch the best way we know how. With our tongue in our cheek, but sincere admiration in our hearts, we present the new Marketing Pilgrim logo:

What do you think?

Update: We switched the logo back, but here’s a reminder of how awesome it looked on our site:

MarketingPilgrim.com With Our New Logo

Hopefully that headline got your attention.

This is not some bizarre court ruling that’s going to make it impossible for you to send out media pitches and press releases, it’s a policy update from Marketing Pilgrim.

As of today, any press release, media advisory, or “we think your readers will like this” emails will be marked as spam, if they are sent to andy AT marketingpil…com.

Sound harsh? Well, you should see my inbox!

I’ve tried replying with the correct method of contacting us, and we even have a news tips page for your submissions. None of that seems to be getting through.

So, this is the one and only time we’ll tell you that you should update your records to send all of the above type emails to editor AT marketingpilgrim.com.

Get that? Good! Cos, while we do want to hear from you, sending them to my email address will simply result in a “Report Spam” mouse click.

Cheers!

(photo credit)

On the flip side, if you are looking for a job make sure you check our marketing job listings regularly. These update every day and despite the economic times this is a great industry to be looking for your next great opportunity. And we want to help! Lastly, every new job is posted to our @MarketingPilgrm Twitter account so follow us today to stay informed.

Here are a few jobs that we cherry picked from the list today

Digital Marketing Manager for Nokia in Paris

Online Marketing Specialist for Red Hat in Raleigh, NC

Senior Marketing Manager – Social Media for Microsoft in Tacoma, WA

SEO Engineer at ADP in Redwood City, CA

These are just a few of the great jobs that are currently listed and new jobs show up every day. So if you are looking for a new gig or you are an employer or agency looking to list your interactive marketing, search, social media and other openings try out the Marketing Pilgrim Job Board today!

Oh and by the way, at only $27 per month per listing it’s hard to say no.

For those of you would like to reach our audience of top flight Internet marketing professionals we have sponsorship and advertising opportunities available for you too. You can also contact us today by email, editor [AT] marketingpilgrim DOT com.

VISIT OUR SPONSORS TODAY!

WPROMOTE – Superior search engine marketing
Adgooroo – Insights that drive competitive advantage
Text Link Brokers – Smarter links for higher rankings
SEO Positive – SEO, website design, PPC, e-mail marketing, link building
Sponsoredreviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, advertisers build buzz
Vertical Leap – Scalable all-inclusive search marketing at a fixed price
PR Newswire – Content distribution, targeting, monitoring, measurement and online engagement
Trackur – Social media monitoring tool

THANKS AGAIN TO OUR ADVERTISERS AND OUR READERS! YOU ARE ALL THE BEST.

The event is on February 17th at 11:30am and here’s a teaser of what you can expect.

See you there!

PubCon South at Austin is just around the corner, then the mega SES New York kicks off on March 21st. SES continues to offer a great mix of search and social sessions and really is a great event for any east-coast marketers–newbie and seasoned-pros alike.

In case you were on the fence about attending, SES has kindly given us an exclusive 20% discount code for anyone that wants to attend.

When you register, simply enter the following code: 20MPL

Have fun!

Now that we have a bona fide managing editor in place at Marketing Pilgrim, it’s probably time to assume that you don’t already know that I’m the CEO of social media monitoring tool Trackur. Hence, the “sponsored” added to this title, just in case.

Anyway, after much success with our previous Apple iPad giveaways, Trackur has just launched a new contest–this time you could win an Apple iPad 2.

Huh? Say what? I didn’t know that Apple had announced the iPad 2 yet, so how is Trackur giving one away?

Oh c’mon, we all know that Apple will announce the iPad 2 in the very near future, so we’re getting a head start and naming it as the prize for our contest. By entering, you have the chance to be one of the very first owners of the iPad 2. It’s a win-win for all of us!

Entering is a piece of cake! You just need a Trackur account (free or paid) and then tweet the message you’ll find on this page.

Easy, huh?

For full details and contest rules, head over to the Trackur Apple iPad 2 contest page.

While I’ve personally been blogging less and less, Frank Reed and Cynthia Boris have been hitting it out of the park! Case in point, Frank’s excellent interview yesterday with Mike Blumenthal.

So, why have I been slacking?

Honestly, Trackur is growing so fast it’s time to turn my attention 100% on building the world’s best social media monitoring tool. (Yes, the SEO in me couldn’t pass up that anchor text opportunity).

However, Marketing Pilgrim is still my baby! It’s become the leading place for marketers to get the lowdown on the latest internet marketing news. As we’ve always said, “We don’t always break the news, but we do always break it down for you!”

So, to ensure Marketing Pilgrim continues on its epic growth in 2011, I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that Frank Reed will today take over as Managing Editor!

A round of applause for Frank? OK, maybe leave him a comment in this post.

Frank will be tasked with ensuring Marketing Pilgrim continues to offer the best in marketing news commentary, but he’s also got some great ideas up his sleeve.

Cynthia will continue to be his “wing woman,” Joe will kick-butt on Saturdays, David will keep an eye out for interesting developments you may have missed, and me? Well, I’m moving to the role of “Publisher” which will see me more behind the scenes, but you just know I won’t be able to resist adding my 2 cents on a regular basis.

Thank you for your loyal readership. Frank and I are looking forward to an awesome 2011 with you!

But what about after the transaction? Where’s the seal that says, “Hey, once you become a customer, we’re going to take great care of you”?

Oh wait, here it is: Introducing the Trackur Actively Listening seal.

What’s different about the Actively Listening seal? Two things. First, this seal tells your customers, prospects, business partners–anyone really–that you care about their experience with your company. It assures them that whether they post to Facebook, Twitter, a blog or forum, you’re listening for that conversation.

It tells them that you care.

The second difference? It’s absolutely free!

Simply grab your free Trackur account and then pick the seal from the options available. Don’t want to link back to Trackur? Then don’t! Don’t want to pass on precious PageRank? Add a “nofollow”- we don’t mind. What we do want is for more businesses to listen to what their customers are saying about them.

Here’s an explanation–with some help of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.

Merry Christmas!

With news sites and blogs, we provided further analysis with screenshots, traffic details, backlink numbers and more. Today, we’ve added a similar dashboard for Twitter users influence.

As you can see, we have all the info you need to make a quickly decide if this person is someone that is exerting an influence on your brand.

The Trackur dashboard includes:

• InfluenceRank score out of 100. As with our InfluenceRank for web sites, the higher the number, the more influence they have! For this score we’ve partnered with Klout–the leader in tracking Twitter influencers. Click on the Klout logo  in the dash and you’ll be taken to their site for even more insights on the Twitter profile.
• Avatar and profile information. Who are they? What do they look like?
• How many followers? How many are they following? How vocal are they?
• Klout is also providing us details of the topics they are most influential. So, if you are tracking the keyword “iPhone” and you see they are influential in “Mobile” you’d probably want to sit up and take notice.
• Lastly, we have the comments box. This is where you can keep private notes of any contact or notes about the user.

How do you find the new Twitter influence metrics? Easy…

We’re not standing still, either! Look for many new features in the New Year as we strive to ensure Trackur remains a social media monitoring dashboard that is cheaper, faster, and more accurate than any other!

Not using Trackur? Get you free social media monitoring dashboard today!

To all Marketing Pilgrims, we hope you have a restful, thankful, and blessed Thanksgiving.

“When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you.” - Deuteronomy 8:10

To celebrate, we are finally launching a feature that has been requested pretty much since day one: an API!

Yes, the Trackur API will free companies from the Trackur dashboard and instead allow them to take our data in either XML or JSON formats and do with it as they please!

What are some of the ways the Trackur API can be put to good use?

• Provide your clients with social media monitoring within your own interface
• Build internal competitive intelligence tools
• Use our data for SEO link building–find relevant and authoritative bloggers to send link requests to!
• Use the API to create the interface that meets your needs. Want fancy charting, go for it!
• And on, and on…

Really, we see the main use of the Trackur API being for companies that want to provide monitoring for their clients, but want to do so within their own dashboard or interface.

Sound like something you’re interested in? Head on over to the Trackur web site to learn more about the Trackur API.

THANK YOU!

This is the 8,000th post on Marketing Pilgrim.

We’re now 5 years old and still growing strong.

My sincere thanks to all of our readers, supporters, sponsors, and friends!

PS. Almost forgot, a special thanks to Frank and Cynthia and all of the great writers that have made Marketing Pilgrim a success over the past 5 years!

To all our readers that served in the military…

To all their family members that fight for our freedom…

To all those that battled so that we may live in “the land of the free….”

Thank You!

How it works is that you’re now able to define various keywords and competitors on the fly. If you want to manage campaigns or projects in your account, simply add a few Research Keywords for each project and, voila, they’re finding you new prospects for each project that night.

So, what are each of these new parts of your account used to direct their link prospect research for your campaigns?

Relevance Keywords are the keywords that factor into your query relevance score. If you’re using your account for multiple projects, this is what you’ll change on the fly when you’re looking for prospects for each different campaign.

Research Keywords are used to direct their link prospect research. For example, if you’re looking for opportunities for a specific product one week, you might have 5-10 keywords about that product. Then, the next week, you might change your Research Keywords to research various services, etc.

Competitors Domains are used for the competitor links search forms to search on link prospects that link to your competitors, as well as to perform multiple citation analysis. You can change your competitors as often as you would like, allowing you to flexibly find new link opportunities for various campaigns.

Link Types influence what kinds of link opportunities they discover for you. If you’re looking for Guest Post opportunities, you might turn that weight up to 10, but you might then set your Links Pages weight to a 1 until you’re ready to pursue those kinds of links.

They found that once a user digs in a bit and gets to see how it works for their campaigns,they love it! Because of that, they’re now offering Free Trial accounts through their sign up page.

(Disclosure: Ontolo is one of only two companies we trust enough to belong to their affiliate program.)