Ad age has quick blurb about companies and viral marketing. Their article indicates its mostly the under 25 crowd now that are the target, I think that is a little untrue, I know many people much older than 25 that are into You Tube, and Google Videos.

Viral Marketing can take many forms but the emergence of user generated video has enhanced viral marketing with many viewers watching what they think are real videos only to find out later it was actually put out by a company like Mcdonalds or Smirnoff. Either Way they all seem to generate buzz, interest and traffic to the target website or business. Viral Marketing works.

The Advetising Age Article is Here..

A couple of days ago many organizations reported on the findings of how much of an increase there was in online revenue in 2006 over the same period in 2005. Now yesterday I ran across yet another article talking about how bad click fraud is.
If you are spending a lot of money on Pay Per Click right now, you not want to read this article…

“The spreading scourge poses the single biggest threat to the Internet’s advertising gold mine and is the most nettlesome question facing Google and Yahoo” Paid to Read rings around the world are also apparently becoming very popular.

“Paid to read” rings with hundreds or thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in living rooms and dens around the world. ”

Reportedly some of these people are making thousands of dollars simply by clicking on pay per click ads.

For small companies this should just another reason to be very careful when using PPC advertising. PPC and Search Engine Marketing can generate return but.. just as with blog marketing or a corporate blog program and most most other forms of online marketing, get some expert help, getting expert help early on may save you thousands or even millions depending on your budget over time.
Blog marketing offers an alternative to PPC advertising that gains market share, increases traffic, helps in Search Engine Optimization if done right, and none of the risks losing money that Pay Per Click advertising might. Companies spending money on PPC and Google Adwords Campaigns come and start a small blog marketing campaign, you may not have the instant gratification of seeing your add in the engines right away ..but you will, within a short time see results and return on investment and shrinking cost per sale or cost per lead that only gets better as your campaign and your corporate blogs grows.

I doubt many in advertising are surprised but online ad revenue is significantly higher this year than last year.
Highlights of the Report:

• Revenues in the US for first 1/2 of 2006 were  $7.9 billion which is a new high

• 37% increase over the first half of 2005.

• Internet advertising for the 2nd Quarter revenue totaled nearly $4.1billion for the second quarter of 2006,

• 36% increase over 2005 Q2

Link to Report:Ad Spending Up

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Viral Blog Success RSS Campaign

Viral marketing takes on a life of its own and grows and grows, and may hit many peaks on the way. Echoes of some viral campaigns can be felt for years.
Blogs are the new platform to get the word out, once they are set up its as simple as typing and hitting publish.

Success is virtually guaranteed as the investment can be as little or as much as a company is willing to spend. The return on investment continues to grow over time. Cost Per Lead and Cost Per Acquisition of Client continues to lessen.

RSS is one of the key components broadcasting the message worldwide to be placed in front of interested readers who will spread the word and increase the word of mouth marketing and viral effect.

Life Magazine in its 2 year anniversary appears to be headed for the grave according to a New York Post Report.

“INSIDERS are wondering how much life is left in Life as media giant Time Warner staggers and magazine subsidiary Time Inc. embarks on the biggest downsizing in its storied history.The two-year anniversary of Life as a newspaper insert dawns in early October but insiders are not exactly in a celebratory mood. The magazine is believed to be losing at least $35 million a year.” from Keith Kelly’s Article

The magazine is losing money fast and doesn’t appear to be gaining any ground. So it could be on the way out just as many other magazines have been this year. A lot of people speculate that this is a sign of the times, print is dying and online is booming. Thats definately true but in this case I think its really because the product , Life Magazine, is just bad. People look at it a few times, and after realizing its fluff its just discarded into the trash along with other ads for things like the commemorative NFL train set, or gold coins with the face of some historical figure on them…

Imagine If Life Magazine decided to brand itself in the blogosphere, publish a news worthy blog with great writers and high quality digital photos…how successful would a venture like that be? Tremendously. Many companies are jumping in the blogosphere some full force others just dipping their toes in… it will be interesting to see who makes the biggest splash.

Just like watching the Jetsons Order up food on their computer, and other Star Trek spin offs where people casually ordered up anything from their computer. RSS marketing is ready right now to offer consumers on demand live product and service updates, sale notifications and other call to action notifications.
In a few minutes buyers can subscribe to feeds and then sit back and wait for what they are looking for instead of wasting time “searching”. We have all seen the stats on how many hours employees spend online “searching” every holiday season we get the standard ” How much time do your employees waste buying Christmas gifts on line?” from all the news outlets.
Encourage your employees to use RSS readers, so they spend 10 minutes setting up subscriptions and then sit back and wait for the “deals” or the latest product information to be delivered to them almost real time. The entire purchase process time is cut down significantly.
If we believe the stats about how much time people waste searching while at work, RSS marketing could free up hours of time for employees to focus work thus increasing productivity.

Watching Monday Night Football the other night I heard one of the announcers mention that it was a big victory last night for Jacksonville. Such a “big win” for what he called a “small market” team.. he even went on to make statements implying that a lot of people haven’t heard of the Jacksonville Jaguars. It made me think… I have never thought of them as a “small market” team and wondered what the announcer was referring to when he mentioned that some people had not heard of them… certainly not the many NFL fans who have been watching Jacksonville play great football in front of some very dedicated fans in Jacksonville Florida which as many know is 100% a football city.

Does the Term “small market” really apply to the NFL anymore? or any Professional Sport? Are these references referring to Local TV market?

The landscape has changed. Every team is widely known due to ESPN and other network TV coverage including NFL Sunday ticket and other subscription services.

Crossroads Part 1.
The same can be said of the Internet in the beginning well say 10-12 years ago new companies were able to gain increased exposure and sales and not have to spend huge amounts of money advertising in “traditional ways” A new company could put up a website back then and with a few tweaks and attention gain online traffic with very little in terms of advertising cost.

Crossroads Part 2.

Blogs offer the same type of opportunity to both large and small companies now. Smaller companies can enter into 2 markets now with professional corporate blogs. The blogoshpere which is becoming larger almost every second,and traditional search which is the norm right now and still growing. The entry point for a standard blog marketing campaign is low with only the more advanced campaigns being out of reach of even the smallest company interested in marketing or branding.

For the record no one in this office is a Jaguars fan.

How important can an aggressive RSS and Blog Marketing Campaign be?

I wanted to share a recent email from a current customer with you. He has been with us less than a month and has already seen very positive results. He decided to subscribe to some RSS feeds one night and had an epiphany.

“This is really pretty cool how you can instantly see a whole bunch of the websites you regularly visit and in one glance you can see who has new content. Saves a ton of time for avid browsers to regularly visit a site only to find there is nothing new. .

…..Until you start using an RSS reader you can’t begin to realize the actual value. Its the missing link (no pun intended) that pulls the blog concept all together for newbies.”

This type of reaction is common among people new to RSS. It truly does still offer a wow factor. I think many people out in the blogosphere think that RSS is old news, well in some circles it is but many business professionals are still only just “aware” of it. They hear it thrown about but don’t really understand what it is, or more importantly how it can effect their business.

Here is a link to the wikipedia definition
We would be happy to answer any application questions for your just let us know.

As our customer suggested go and subscribe to some RSS feeds and see for yourself how they work, how nice and convenient it is for receiving the information that you decide is important. You can test some out by clicking on the Feeds Buttons on the bottom right of this blog.

Bloglines is a very popular web based RSS reader. There are many many ways that RSS Feeds can impact a business but one quick example: I am looking for some office equipment on the used market and have several subscriptions to sites with RSS feeds. I am now able to get a chance at some of the best equipment as soon as it is listed… I don’t have to take any time to go and look/search. The Information comes delivered to me (an extremely high quality lead) right away… I have made several purchases this way. I know this trend is growing more popular as people are beginning to embrace RSS Feeds. Why? Because it is easier for the consumer.

RSS Feed Marketing another way to market you business online, that also happens to fit in perfectly with a professional blog marketing campaign. Many RSS Feed readers choices are out there and more are on the way including a nice one from Microsoft.

I actually saw this on the WSJ marketplace a few days ago I think but since I don’t have an online subscription I figured I’d wait for someone to write about it.

Once Bloggers had to sneak in to write about fashion shows and other high profile gatherings now they get invited and get afforded VIP treatment.

We talk a lot here about branding and the power of blogging. Here is a quote from the link above.

“This is the first time ever that fashion bloggers are attracting the attention of the fashion industry. As bloggers get more followers and advertisers start to shift more spending to them, fashion designers are seeing these independent web publishers as a new marketing opportunity and ego boost to their creations. ”

Key word of note here that I saw:  attention, followers,advertisers, independant web publishers,  new marketing opportunity…..some other interesting tag items in the article are viral marketing, cost effective, public relations, reputation  and other positively powered marketing words.
Just another example of how companies and high profile industry segments are begginning to take advantage of this new marketing opportunity to generate business.

Business Blog Marketing is one of the Triangle Direct Media brands.
Our Current Projects include:

Real Estate Blog Marketing

Retail Blog Marketing

and the newly launched Business Blog Marketing.

Our focus is on helping companies effectivly use the BlogOsphere to brand their companies online. A well designed and strategic blog marketing camapaign can act as a catalyst to promote a company’s other online and offline initiatives or it can act as a standalone campaign benefitting from being the sole reciepient of a marketing budget. Whatever the situation Business Blog Marketing and Triangle Direct can implement a professional blog marketing campaign for your business.