In this amazing live commercial from the UK a team of skydivers spell HONDA!
Friday, May 30, 2008
Why You Should Consider Blogging for your Business
Many companies don’t realize that blogging can benefit the growth and success of their business.
Here are 4 reasons why I think a company should consider creating a blog:
Blogging can help you become an authority in the industry your company is in. You most likely started your company because you know a lot about it and it interests you, so besides having your website that provides information about your products or services, have a blog with topics about the topics that relate to the industry your company is in.
Get feedback from customers and start a conversation. Having a company blog is a great way for customers to express their thoughts about a blog post discussing your services or products.
Having a blog is all about creating content, and since a blog displays your most recent blog post first, the search engines will definitely crawl your site regularly, boosting search engine rankings.
Having a company blog also allows discussing trends in the business’ particular niche. Discussing trends will show that your customers or potential clients that the company is on top of what is going on in the industry.
Currently the top 3 Blogs when searching for “company blog” in Google:
http://www.blogsouthwest.com/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://blog.dogster.com/
My favorite out of the 3 would have to be Southwest Airlines blog, since there is a lot of information other than blog posts, such as company news, video, a podcast, photo gallery and even a user poll. I also like the fact that the company uses a lot of social networking sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Here are 4 reasons why I think a company should consider creating a blog:
Blogging can help you become an authority in the industry your company is in. You most likely started your company because you know a lot about it and it interests you, so besides having your website that provides information about your products or services, have a blog with topics about the topics that relate to the industry your company is in.
Get feedback from customers and start a conversation. Having a company blog is a great way for customers to express their thoughts about a blog post discussing your services or products.
Having a blog is all about creating content, and since a blog displays your most recent blog post first, the search engines will definitely crawl your site regularly, boosting search engine rankings.
Having a company blog also allows discussing trends in the business’ particular niche. Discussing trends will show that your customers or potential clients that the company is on top of what is going on in the industry.
Currently the top 3 Blogs when searching for “company blog” in Google:
http://www.blogsouthwest.com/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://blog.dogster.com/
My favorite out of the 3 would have to be Southwest Airlines blog, since there is a lot of information other than blog posts, such as company news, video, a podcast, photo gallery and even a user poll. I also like the fact that the company uses a lot of social networking sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Leadership Keynote Speaker To Speak At SIPA
Leadership keynote speakers, Jay Berkowitz, Josh Macht, Bob Bly, Chris Schroeder and Fredrick Marckini will be speaking at the 32nd Specialized Information Publishers Association Annual Marketing Conference on June 1, 2008 In Washington, DC.
Topics will include:
* How to produce Websites that come up in Google searches
* Effective Email marketing through client newsletters
* How to generate positive return-on-investment with Internet advertising trends
* What online business models are working, and not working, today
* How to build ongoing relationships with the customers who visit your Website
* How to capitalize on the Ten leading Internet adverting and website promotion trends
* Top search engine marketing services
* How to select an ethical Internet marketing company
Topics will include:
* How to produce Websites that come up in Google searches
* Effective Email marketing through client newsletters
* How to generate positive return-on-investment with Internet advertising trends
* What online business models are working, and not working, today
* How to build ongoing relationships with the customers who visit your Website
* How to capitalize on the Ten leading Internet adverting and website promotion trends
* Top search engine marketing services
* How to select an ethical Internet marketing company
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Ebay Displaying Targeted Ads (again)
Over a year ago I boutght an unlocked Nokia 8801 on ebay. Since that time I have changed phones twice, making a lateral move to a Palm 680 and then upgrading to an IPhone. When I went to eBay earlier today to check on some Adidas shoes I was bidding on (sorry no link, I want to win them) this was the ad I saw on the homepage.
Now since I bought my last two phones somewhere other than eBay.com, the ad serving system does not know that I no longer use that phone, but maybe because I have bought other phones on eBay it may assume I am in the market for a new phone (I am, but for a new 3G IPhone, when it comes out). In any case, when targeted ads are discussed and how some banner ads can be effective, this is certainly an example of how highly targeted, personalized ads can be drive actions. This time it reminded me that I probably should sell the 8801 on ebay and lucky for me I know of a great ebay consignment shop here in Boca Raton, the eAuction Cafe on Federal Hwy.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Get Satisfaction Lets Companies Interact Closely With Their Customers
With reputation management being a very important issue for companies these days, Get Satisfaction [EDITORS NOTE WE HAVE RECEIVED SPAM COMPLAINTS ABOUT GET SATISFACTION - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK] is a site that allows companies to interact with their customers, get insight on how customers feel about their services, products and answer any questions they may have.
Users of the site can do 4 things: ask questions, share ideas, report issues or just comment on a company or product. Every company page has their own personal page, and even has an area with a feed of Twitter users' "tweets" about that company or product, called Overheard.
Looking through the site, I noticed that many well known companies already have pages on Get Satisfaction such as Twitter, Paypal, Netflix, Google, Time Warner Cable, Apple and Nintendo. Employees of these companies are shown on these pages and the idea is for them to answer any questions and concerns. The convenience of being able to ask questions about companies and products in one place and being able to discuss with others users is pretty neat. Although there may be numerous websites that allow users to review or discuss products and companies, I don't think I've seen any that endorses actual employees of these companies to participate and help their customers.
An account at Get Satisfaction is free, and once a signed up user, you can add official reps and employees to the company page.[EDITORS NOTE WE HAVE RECEIVED SPAM COMPLAINTS ABOUT GET SATISFACTION - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK]
Below is what Twitter's Get Satisfaction page looks like:
Users of the site can do 4 things: ask questions, share ideas, report issues or just comment on a company or product. Every company page has their own personal page, and even has an area with a feed of Twitter users' "tweets" about that company or product, called Overheard.
Looking through the site, I noticed that many well known companies already have pages on Get Satisfaction such as Twitter, Paypal, Netflix, Google, Time Warner Cable, Apple and Nintendo. Employees of these companies are shown on these pages and the idea is for them to answer any questions and concerns. The convenience of being able to ask questions about companies and products in one place and being able to discuss with others users is pretty neat. Although there may be numerous websites that allow users to review or discuss products and companies, I don't think I've seen any that endorses actual employees of these companies to participate and help their customers.
An account at Get Satisfaction is free, and once a signed up user, you can add official reps and employees to the company page.[EDITORS NOTE WE HAVE RECEIVED SPAM COMPLAINTS ABOUT GET SATISFACTION - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK]
Below is what Twitter's Get Satisfaction page looks like:
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
CEO of Ten Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz, Featured on "Money for Breakfast" on Fox TV
Our very own President and CEO, Jay Berkowitz was featured on the "Money for Breakfast" show this morning on Fox TV.
Jay spoke during a segment titled "Tech Talk". The topic was free or low cost ways to support your business with internet marketing in soft economic times.
Jay's interview offers quick tips and tactics, as well as some of the top trends in use today.
You might also want to view the first in our video series explaining these tips.
Jay spoke during a segment titled "Tech Talk". The topic was free or low cost ways to support your business with internet marketing in soft economic times.
Jay's interview offers quick tips and tactics, as well as some of the top trends in use today.
You might also want to view the first in our video series explaining these tips.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Ten Golden Rules CEO to Appear on FOX TV
Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz is scheduled to appear on Fox Business TV's Money for Breakfast show hosted by Alexis Glick on Wednesday May 21st, between 8:15 AM and 9:00 AM EST.
Mr. Berkowitz will be discussing Ten Free Tools you can use to prepare your business for a soft economy.
We will post a link to the video after the show.
Monday, May 19, 2008
New Video Ten Free Tools to Prepare Your Company for a Recession
We are producing a series of videos on how to recession proof your business. Here is tip #1 - how to generate free traffic to your website with search engine optimization
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Geek Dinner Miami
Thanks to Joseph Jaffe from Jaffe Juice we embeded his Qik video from the Miami Geek dinner featuring Personality Not Included author and superstar blogger Rohit Bhagava, geek blogger Monica Betancourt, Refresh Miami co-organizer Alex De Carvalho, Sex and the Beach blogger Maria De Los Angeles , 7th Son Podio-book Author J.C. Hutchins, Refresh Miami organizer Brian Breslin, geek stud Jonathan Gluck , Matthew Chamberlin , barrista coder Jorge L. Barroso, eBay guru Scott Pooler, Josh Hallet, Lisa Sparks ,Matt Reyes, Edward Toro, Michael Tangeman, Nathaniel McNamara, Yvette F., Conversionista Alex Harris, Mitch Joel should've been there for all the publicity he got :)
Friday, May 16, 2008
Google Automatic Match
When everyone logs into their adwords account on May 20, 2008 they will see a new option, a new checkbox (prechecked and autoenabled) for a new feature 'Automatic matching" Many of you may have heard about auto-matching and are already not looking forward to this new option. For those of you not familiar with this new "feature" auto match works like this (as per an email I received in my inbox, just a little bit ago-
I. About Automatic Matching
Automatic matching shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords. It works by analyzing the content of the landing pages, ads, and keywords in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.
The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or lower than your ad group's current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic.
Automatic matching won't allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won't affect the traffic you're currently receiving. In addition, automatic matching will have no impact if your campaigns already capture the majority of relevant traffic.
To summarize auto-matching, you were previously not bidding on a keyword phrase as you didn't think the keyword was relevant or important to your bottomline (this is after you used Adwords numerous tools to get keyword additions that Adwords thought would be relevant, and in your wisdom you did not listen to the campaign optimizer tool to add semi-relevant terms). Well that was good enough for Google, Adwords will now be displaying these keywords in ads for you when an individual conducts a search, and then you will be charged for the click, as Adwords thinks that term might be beneficial to you.
As an example, I sell widgets on my site, someone does a search for widget accessories and because i have widgets on my site, Adwords will display my ad as it is "close enough' (my quotes) to what you sell and my be relevant to the searcher. Its besides the point you don't sell widget accessories or want that visitor coming to your site, you still pay for the visitor.
I may be the only one, but I am not really that interested in Automatic match, and the fact that Adwords auto enables this function, leads me to believe that the company that benefits the most from this new "feature" is Google itself.
I. About Automatic Matching
Automatic matching shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords. It works by analyzing the content of the landing pages, ads, and keywords in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.
The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or lower than your ad group's current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic.
Automatic matching won't allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won't affect the traffic you're currently receiving. In addition, automatic matching will have no impact if your campaigns already capture the majority of relevant traffic.
To summarize auto-matching, you were previously not bidding on a keyword phrase as you didn't think the keyword was relevant or important to your bottomline (this is after you used Adwords numerous tools to get keyword additions that Adwords thought would be relevant, and in your wisdom you did not listen to the campaign optimizer tool to add semi-relevant terms). Well that was good enough for Google, Adwords will now be displaying these keywords in ads for you when an individual conducts a search, and then you will be charged for the click, as Adwords thinks that term might be beneficial to you.
As an example, I sell widgets on my site, someone does a search for widget accessories and because i have widgets on my site, Adwords will display my ad as it is "close enough' (my quotes) to what you sell and my be relevant to the searcher. Its besides the point you don't sell widget accessories or want that visitor coming to your site, you still pay for the visitor.
I may be the only one, but I am not really that interested in Automatic match, and the fact that Adwords auto enables this function, leads me to believe that the company that benefits the most from this new "feature" is Google itself.
Leadership Speakers Speak at Renaissance Executive Forum Meeting for CEOs
Jay Berkowitz and Greta Schulz will be sharing the top ways to promote your business in tough economic times. Jay Berkowitz will start with with ideas for driving traffic to a website followed by a presentation from Proactive Training CEO Greta Schulz and Business Consultant Nicole Governile on converting your sales leads into clients.
The event will take place on May 29th at the Woodfield Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida. To register, please call Proactive Training at (561) 683-8145.
The event will take place on May 29th at the Woodfield Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida. To register, please call Proactive Training at (561) 683-8145.
Dunkin Donuts Free Coffee Day
So yesterday was Free Iced Coffee Day at Dunkin Donuts. All of us at TGR had our share of the new iced coffee flavors and I wanted to see how much buzz there was in the blogosphere. When I did a search in Google Blog Search for “Dunkin Donuts Free Iced Coffee Day,” I got back 1,870 results! There was even a Facebook page created for this specific event. WOW, THIS WAS A VIRAL MACHINE.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Google Reader Adds Notes for Sharing
I’m an avid user of Google Reader because of its web interface and the fact that I can read my subscribed feeds at any computer, but I’ve never really shared the blog posts I’ve found interesting using the Shared Items feature.
If you’re the type of person who usually likes sharing good articles and links with everyone, like me, with Google adding the Notes Feature to Shared Items, you can explain why you’re sharing that particular post.
I think that this new feature will encourage more people to share posts that they read with others.
Google also added 3 new styles to add a little personality to your public shared page. Here’s what mine looks like, and I’ll definitely be adding more shared posts in the future.
If you’re the type of person who usually likes sharing good articles and links with everyone, like me, with Google adding the Notes Feature to Shared Items, you can explain why you’re sharing that particular post.
I think that this new feature will encourage more people to share posts that they read with others.
Google also added 3 new styles to add a little personality to your public shared page. Here’s what mine looks like, and I’ll definitely be adding more shared posts in the future.
Adwords Factoring in Landing Page Load Time
On the Adwords Blog yesterday, Google reiterated that starting in June landing page load time would factor into your Quality Score. Landing page load time is simply how long it takes a user to see your landing page after an ad was clicked. The load time is relative to how fast your page loads compared to other servers in your geographic region.
In anticipation of this happening, Adwords has added an additional metric into the Keyword Analysis Tool. In addition to Keyword Relevance and Landing Page, Landing Page Load Time is now displayed. A screen shot is displayed.
There are several things you can do if your landing page loads slowly.
- Reduce Graphics
- Minimize Flash and Scripts
- Compress Graphics
- Clean Up Your HTML
In anticipation of this happening, Adwords has added an additional metric into the Keyword Analysis Tool. In addition to Keyword Relevance and Landing Page, Landing Page Load Time is now displayed. A screen shot is displayed.
There are several things you can do if your landing page loads slowly.- Reduce Graphics
- Minimize Flash and Scripts
- Compress Graphics
- Clean Up Your HTML
Friday, May 2, 2008
Using Twitter to Get Customer Service
I’ve read a couple blog posts in the blogosphere about people who’ve expressed their feelings about a specific website or product, and a while later, being contacted by a representative from that website or company trying to resolve the problem. I think the idea is pretty neat, and makes Twitter a great tool for businesses to assist their customers or potential customers.
Some companies such as Comcast and Southwest Airlines are involved in the Twitter community, monitoring and informing customers about deals and other news. These Twitter pages are usually monitored by an employee that responds to a customer concern by sending a direct response using @username or a direct message, which is similar to a private message.
How can you monitor if people are talking about your company or product? Using a site called Tweet Scan, you can type a keyword, such a company name, and a list of Twitter users mentioning that company name or keyword. I think this is a good way to interact with others, and the idea that a company responds to a Twitter user personally will make that user feel like they’re important, which is good online reputation management.
Some companies such as Comcast and Southwest Airlines are involved in the Twitter community, monitoring and informing customers about deals and other news. These Twitter pages are usually monitored by an employee that responds to a customer concern by sending a direct response using @username or a direct message, which is similar to a private message.
How can you monitor if people are talking about your company or product? Using a site called Tweet Scan, you can type a keyword, such a company name, and a list of Twitter users mentioning that company name or keyword. I think this is a good way to interact with others, and the idea that a company responds to a Twitter user personally will make that user feel like they’re important, which is good online reputation management.
How to Start Branding Your Business Online
When is comes to branding your business online, getting your business name out there is of the utmost importance. You want to get your name out there so when people think of a product or a service, they think of your brand name associated with it. So, if the time has come for you to start branding your business online, the following are a few initial steps that can help start branding your company name on the internet.
First, buy a domain name for your company name. If you company’s name is Branding Example, you want to make sure you secure a domain name that reflects that, such as brandingexample.com. You also want to buy similar domain names in case someone tries to type in a variation. For example, you might also consider purchasing branding-example.com, brandingexample.net, and brandingexamples.com.
Second, build a website focused around what you do, how you do it, and what you stand for. On your website, be sure to have an about us page giving ample information on what you do and your background information. This page will help build trust with potential customers.
Third, build business profiles. Facebook.com, Linkedin.com, Naymz.com, and Zoominfo.com are just some of the free sites available where you can create a profile about your business. These sites are public information and can show up in the search results. These are a great way to spread your brand name.
First, buy a domain name for your company name. If you company’s name is Branding Example, you want to make sure you secure a domain name that reflects that, such as brandingexample.com. You also want to buy similar domain names in case someone tries to type in a variation. For example, you might also consider purchasing branding-example.com, brandingexample.net, and brandingexamples.com.
Second, build a website focused around what you do, how you do it, and what you stand for. On your website, be sure to have an about us page giving ample information on what you do and your background information. This page will help build trust with potential customers.
Third, build business profiles. Facebook.com, Linkedin.com, Naymz.com, and Zoominfo.com are just some of the free sites available where you can create a profile about your business. These sites are public information and can show up in the search results. These are a great way to spread your brand name.
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