A 10 item list of guidelines for marketing utilizing blogs and blog marketing has been issued by the WOMMA. (word of mouth marketing association) There have been a few stories lately of fake blogs and fake viral videos that everyone finds out were really just being done by Wal-Mart or some other corporation. These are sometimes called a “flog” or a corporation fronting blog or “fake” blog. Which is different from splogs which are all spam generate content.

If you think about it “fake” blogs or fake blog posts that someone is paid to do or blog that a company has out there that is not acknowledged is just as deceptive as pay per click search ads would be if they were not labeled. The FTC came in and regulated Pay Per Click ads to make sure that the consumer knew they were ads. If we follow that logic should they also step in and require the same sort of labeling on commercial blogs in order to ensure that consumers are not tricked?

The principle is the same. In search results people were trusting the engines to deliver relevant results when some ads weren’t clearly labeled the FTC said no you have to make sure people can tell the difference. Here is an article about the FTC recommendations from 2002…by Danny Sullivan.
Here is a quote from the article “Commercial Alert filed its complaint last July, claiming that a lack of disclosure about paid content integrated into search results constituted “deceptive advertising,” something the FTC regulates against.” Are some of these blogs deceptive? Will Ralph Nader target them? Stay tuned..

You can check out the Blog Marketing Code of Ethics here.

Check out this list from Google. Apparently this is where the most searches are being done for “real estate marketing”

The First one did not surprise at all. But some of the others you might find surprising. I wonder what our people over at Real Estate Blog Marketing think of this data.

This is a list in order of where according to Google searches for Real estate marketing originate.

All agents in Las Vegas, Dallas, Tampa, Littleton, Atlanta, Chandler, Phoenix, Charlotte, San Diego, and Miami… A real estate blog would be an excellent idea with very high return on investment.

I ran across an interesting article about the future of retail marketing and on line marketing. The article speculates on a future of Retail in the Web 2.0 Environment.

“It’s a scary scenario. A few major players could take over Web 2.0,” said LeHong, suggesting that a merged entity such as a combined Google and Amazon.com could dominate as a “pretailer,” a product search and price comparison portal.” He calls this GOOGAZON.

The fear here is that such an entity would begin to dominate transactions to a level that they dictate terms to the retailers and business owners. Similar to how a Walmart store effects traditional retail stores in some markets it moves into. This type of entity could flex some big wallet marketing muscle to make sure they are the ones dicatating the terms of the new Web 2.0 Retail Market.

Personally while I agree that in theory this is all possible I have faith that many online business owners and marketers out there will not want to lose their ability to market and sell on line in whatever way they choose. I think that this type of relationship would attract an audience but there is still at least as many if not more consumers for whom the Web 2.0 Retail landscape means more choices, more information and they will want to have choices other than a Googazon type company. The most obvious choice for those consumers is going to be a retail blog and retail blog marketing program.

The retail blog will offer all the features of user input instantly updated information and user reviews that will increase loyalty and attract some of the best most qualified buyers on line. I talked to a company today with a retail blog that recieved 30,000 visitors in the last 3 days. Talk about increase in sales.

In this part 3 of Business Blog Descriptions we will be looking at a Real Estate Blog

A real estate blog most often is done by a real estate agent. The real estate blog will do the following:

• Showcase the agent’s expertise and knowledge of the area they service
• Provide a place to show listings
• Overcome the credibility issue -potential buyers will feel they already know you after reading your blog
• Provide an entry point in into the blogosphere’s over 50 Million readers
• Increase listings-a real estate agent that lists properties for sale in their blog is showing to potetenial sellers that they are going to aggresively market their home
• Use RSS Feeds to attract buyers and sellers

Overall a real estate blog is a simple effective way to bring in new buyers, and sellers to help the agent increase sales and listings.

ABC is launching a viral marketing campaign “live” actors will be slipping notes to people telling them to contact them online.
Details of this viral marketing campaign here.

Types of Business Blogs
In the earlier post we covered a basic overview of what a business blog is. Today I wanted to talk about a specific type of business blog or corporate blogs.

Retail Blog

A retail corporate blog can take many forms. An online retail company can use a retail blog as a blog marketing campaign to help increase site visits for potential customers searching for their products.

Writing in their blog about new products , or writing reviews about products that they carry is an easy way to build up content and brand a retail site as an authority in their retail space. I have seen some clients with retail sites get better results from a business blog than with years of optimization or ppc campaigns. A professional corporate blog in the retail space if properly optimized can improve search rankings and branding in the blogosphere.

Tommorow: Real Estate Blog

Saw a post about Searchmash, Both Posts I saw say this is Google’s.

It is definately simple like when Google First Started…I like the fact that there is no search button.(you have to hit enter) and there many other features I haven’t played around with yet but here is a link to the features.

Here is the cool look, I don’t know if it will stay this way but this is just right. The less on the search page the better.

Right now all I saw was a way to search images and webpages while it displays some images on the right. I am sure it will soon give readers the option to search blogs also, if not it will already be not as full featured as MSN Live Search. Google has a blog search engine now and it only makes sense that any new search option they develop will incorporate these blog search results.

Found this Here

We have to talked to many companies over the last 6 months and some know about blogs. Many more however have heard of blogs but that seems to be the extent of their knowledge. This brief article is for those who might be new to blogging, or haven’t started but are thinking about it.

This is not a history of blogs but just a short look at how a business blog can help any company.
A business blog often called a corporate blog is a website that is on a blog platform. The blog platform or layout has frequently updated articles called posts, that are displayed usually with the latest article or post at the top of the site. On the blog there are usually links to a company website and maybe other websites relevant to what the targeted audience might want to learn or read about. The articles in the blog cover a wide range of topics and include everything from personal experiences of the writer to product news updates and sales. It’s really up to the company. You have to consider the message you want to send, and then look at all the variables that exist in HOW you send the message, or how you blog for your business.

Tommorow I will get a little more specific as to what types of options you have in the message of your business blog and also some considerations as to how to deliver that message.

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.