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.

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.