Alert Blog Reviews

The last domino has fallen: AT&T has announced that they will offer Android handsets on their network. The last of the major US carriers to sign on with the open-source Google OS devices, AT&T plans five Android-based handsets built by Motorola and HTC this year. Of course, AT&T is the home of the iPhone. Along with the Android, AT&T announced at CES that they’ll also be offering a couple Palm OS devices as well as adding support for the Palm, Android, Windows Mobile and Nokia app stores. Perhaps wisely, AT&T didn’t bring up the iPhone, though they continue to enjoy an exclusive sale agreement—which apparently wasn’t reciprocal. (Will it be renewed?) This move by AT&T may be a precursor to signing on with the agreement to sell plans for Google’s new Nexus One . Like most other smartphones, the Nexus One is pretty cool, and Google selling an unlocked version is pretty cool, too—but the price tag (without carrier subsidies and rebates) will effectively keep all but the most tech-covetous shoppers from the Nexus (with the iPhone running as little as $200 vs. the Nexus’s $530). AT&T will also be adding more cell sites and connections to improve their network, which has been facing a lot of complaints of dropped calls and texts and sluggish download times. (Not to mention the 3G map comparison Verizon’s latest ad campaign harps on.) What do you think? Will this help AT&T or Google more in the long run?

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Android Taking over AT&T

It’s hard to believe that 2009 is finally coming to an end. As is always a very popular practice the media likes to take us on a stroll down Memory Lane but make sure we take a brief turn onto Morbid Court. Why? Because it is important to recap what celebrities either died or train-wrecked their lives in the past year. I admit that I read these lists more often than I should and often have the “I didn’t know they died!” moments which do literally nothing to make life better. They just happen. So why not look at how advertisers may have or could have benefited from celebrity news that range from death to sordid trysts to you name it? Search Engine Watch has spoken to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland and came away with this The sudden death of actress Brittany Murphy this week tied a morbid bow on a big 2009 trend — that of celebrities dying and falling from grace. According to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland, the unfortunate events provided advertisers on his network, at times, with a considerable amount of additional exposure at no cost. At this point there are a million places to go with this one and most are not complimentary. I am going to stay on the purely business side of this one though which is sordid enough. Basically, there appears to be a little disappointment from CEO Copeland in the structure of the advertising world as agencies and red tape don’t allow for advertisers to fully take advantage of traffic spikes due to these ‘events’. Though Copeland explained that his company could get campaigns “up and running in a matter of hours,” he said that Blogads didn’t receive any calls from marketers during the celebrity events. “Most major brand campaigns are planned weeks or months…ahead of time. So we haven’t had any ‘drive-by’ advertisers hop on a hot story.” He continued, “We don’t anticipate this kind of demand going forward because of the way the ad agencies and their clients are structured… There’s just [too many] decision-makers and [too much] budgeting, time-lag, and iterative looping built into the process. A really agile and smart advertiser should jump into these stories; but the structure of the ad industry makes it almost impossible.” Well, this just seems too good of an idea to pass up! I have the solution to this and I sure hope that no one takes this one and runs with it. I am going to hang out my shingle for my new ad agency called “Advertising Ambulance Chasers”. I think I will add the tag line: “We Get You There Even Before the Lawyers”. I understand traffic is critical for advertisers but are we going to be heading down this road to make sure that we advertise around tragedy because its good business? I hope not. We can leave that to the cable news networks who don’t realize just how pathetic they look when they make all of their pretty graphics and pithy sayings around the major headlines of the day which are always about some form of pain and suffering. Maybe I am just being naive and it doesn’t really matter how you get the exposure just as long as you do. Imagine though, that people get used to your brand showing up around tragic events? Just seems odd to me. As an advertiser or just an Internet marketer in general, what are your thoughts on trying to be ‘agile enough’ to advertise where the trouble is? Is this how you would like to have your brand known? Is there any potential harm in trying to be a morbidly opportunistic marketer? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Celebrity Death and Misfortune May Help Advertisers

Imagine just a few short years ago what a headline like this may draw out from the newspaper industry and newspaper readers alike. The shock of such a claim would be the first reaction followed by the naysayers that would predict the rapid decline and fall of the newspaper company silly enough to make such a move. Welcome to 2009. The newspaper industry is a shambles and no one is able to cover up the fact anymore. Online delivery of news and media of all sorts has changed the way consumers obtain and ingest the news. As a result the delivery is changing. In a way, it’s like a huge media train wreck that has people doing and saying things never imagined before. Are you shocked, though? Desperate times call for desperate measures and it looks like the Tribune Co. newspapers are ready to at least experiment with an idea that was unfathomable until recently. No AP news wire service for the week of Nov. 8. The Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers plan to utilize as little content from the Associated Press as practical during the week of Nov. 8. The goal, as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday. The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future. While it’s not a complete removal of AP sources for material this is very dramatic considering how the news business has traditionally worked seemingly forever. So where are they getting their news from you ask? Is it all going to fall on the Tribune and its paired down staff? The short answer is no. Besides the content provided by the staff of its own titles, Tribune Co. newspapers will draw from such news sources as Reuters, the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Cable News Network, Global Post, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers during its AP-less trial. Not all of those sources are normally available to Tribune Co. papers. How does the AP feel? They’re not really letting on with statements like this one. “The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including Tribune Co., to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to member newspapers and their readers,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement. If you read through the comment thread of this article you will find some pretty dissatisfied tribune readers with the current state of the paper so maybe the Tribune Co. figures it can’t get any worse. Or can it? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Tribune Co. Papers Set to Go Almost AP-less For Trial

LinkedIn profiles receive high rankings with the Google search engine.  You should be aware of this fact with marketing.  All major search engines can index the profile information on LinkedIn.  Customizing URLs for your company You can customize your own URL with your company’s name.  If you are a beginner with this type of marketing, you will fare better if you utilize particular keywords as compared to your actual name.  You will need to select the “Full View” menu when offered.  In strengthening your business profile, utilize the customization option which LinkedIn offers with your signature when you leave comments particularly with business blogs. Blogs need to prove useful and unique You need to make sure that you add blogs or other useful information about your products and services while linking them to your URLs connected to your profile.  LinkedIn allows for three.  Simply to the section which is labeled “Websites” or “My Company”.  You can customize while adding your very own text for the label which can be your name or your company’s name.  LinkedIn offers this option allowing you to add your own text.  This is very important due to the fact that as the search engines crawl the web, your name will not be lost among all the others.  Keep in mind that you will not receive the majority of your web traffic with this method however, it is a very useful tool and can only be utilized when you set your public profile settings to “Full View”. Keywords are very important You must utilize the right keywords when trying to define yourself or your company.  You should only utilize words which clearly define your business.  You should also utilize keywords which are relevant to the industry which you are marketing to while allowing customers to easily find you. Keep your network updated LinkedIn allows marketers to sync with their blog posts utilizing their LinkedIn profile.  This will allow you to keep everyone who is within your network updated while advertising your business. Email signatures LinkedIn contains the ability to create unique email signatures with Outlook Express, Outlook and Mozilla.  You can place your short version of your LinkedIn profile with a link to your profile. Add profile pictures and images Finally, add a profile picture.  Adding a picture to your profile will aid you with establishing connections which you are strategizing for.  Your profile will in return seem more credible, serious and professional. These tips is not a sure way to gain increased traffic upon your website however if you combine these particular tips you will increase your overall chances of improving the exposure for your business upon the internet.

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Linkedin Marketing Business Tips

You ever have one of those moments when you say something so crazy and off the wall that it has got to be true? For me this happens without me even giving a second thought about it because, to be honest, most of the time it tends to be exactly how I feel–and being sincere is what this whole thing is about, right? So today’s story is about being sincere and having high standards. Our story begins with a service called Aardvark . Are you familiar with Aardvark? In short Aardvark is a question and answer engine. Basically you tie your social media accounts into their engine. When you have a question you can send it to Aardvark through IM or tweet, Aardvark then searches for an appropriate user to answer the question. Alternatively, by participating you are also added on a queue to answer questions from folks in the network. All and all the concept is pretty solid, however I am starting to get tired of giving free advice. So consider that when you read my most recent advice I gave through Aardvark. The names and identities have been changed to protect the innocent/crazy. So before you get all huffy on me and start calling me names, lets recap what just happened. Our friend above, (lets call him Bob ) decides that he wants to start a blog. But unfortunately Bob doesn’t know how to write well or develop good content. Bob doesn’t want to learn how to make his writing better, or different methods of content creation, because quite honestly Bob is lazy. Oh and on top of being lazy, Bob is also cheap. So what does Bob decide to do? Bob decides to go on the internet and use a free service to ask for free advice on how to succeed with as little work as possible. Do you see what the problem is here?? The Problem isn’t Bob . The problem is the millions of other people on the internet just like Bob . If you can’t create good content, provide a good service or product, and are too lazy to improve yourself, then maybe owning a business on the internet isn’t for you. In which case please go back to MySpace and leave me alone!

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Cup of Joe: Create Great Content or Hardcore Pornography?

While we all like our sites to have visitors, a loyal visitor—one who returns for later visits—is especially valuable. And while search engines do send a lot of visitors, a study issued by Chitika earlier this month shows that the most loyal site visitors come from social sites, as eMarketer reports today. Studying 33 million uniques across its publisher network last month, Chitika used the criterion of four or more visits over the course of a week to indicate a loyal visitor. They found that Facebook and Digg had the best loyalty rates: Facebook showed 20.69% of its referrals became loyal visitors. Digg had slightly over 16% of its referrals visit four or more times that week. Interestingly, Yahoo had a slightly better loyalty rate than Google.: Next came the search engines, Yahoo! leading the way with over 15% [15.89%] of referrals being loyal. Google and Bing were practically even at slightly below 12% [11.84% and 11.74%], and Twitter came in last place overall with barely over 11%. I’m a little surprised that one in eight Google visitors return four or more times in a week. Considering that Google sent 76% of the traffic in the study, even with the lower retention rate, it’s still numerically more loyal visitors. But, as Chitika puts it, if you had the option of sending 1000 visitors to your site from Google or Facebook, if you want loyalty, Facebook is a better bet. It’s also interesting that Twitter visitors were least loyal. You might argue that links in Twitter get pushed down in the feed so fast that it’s hard to dig them up again later to return, but the same is probably true for Facebook. (Note, too, that Twitter is falling rapidly in referral rates: eMarketer says, “In July, Twitter was No. 24 on Chitika’s list of top referrers, with 0.05%. By September, it had moved down to 44th place, with just a 0.02% share.”) But probably most interesting is that one-sixth of Digg visitors are loyal. The site has become notorious for one-off traffic spikes that don’t do a whole lot for long term gains—but maybe the dynamic has shifted as the site has aged. What do you think? Do you see more loyal visitors from Digg and Facebook? Have you seen a change in your visitors from Digg?

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Social Sites Send Fewer, but More Loyal Visitors than Search

This year, we’ve seen a lot of pessimistic estimates of YouTube’s operating losses . While the site does bring in some advertising revenue, they haven’t quite covered that $1.65B price tag yet. And based on bandwidth costs, various analysts have estimated annual operating losses of anywhere from $470M to $175M . Note that the more conservative estimate here still includes a bandwidth bill of nearly $50M. But new reports are estimating that cost as even lower. After Arbor Networks’ recent analysis of 256 exabytes of Internet traffic, it seems YouTube may be paying nothing for their bandwidth . As we mentioned before, Arbor Networks found that 6% of all Internet traffic worldwide was going to Google . With that much traffic (we’re talking almost 17 quadrillion megabytes), it seems Google would have to have some serious pipage to support their popularity. According to Wired , The cost of bandwidth has fallen and so too have the profit margins for moving bits, even as traffic grows at an estimated 40 percent a year. With the growth of Google’s network and Content Delivery Networks, the economics of who pays whom to connect grows more complicated than the early days of the net when money flowed upwards — little ISPs paid regional ISPs who paid major ISPs who paid backbone operators. Now if you are Google, you might even begin asking Comcast to pay up to connect its Google Tubes straight to their local cable ISP networks. That way, YouTube videos and Google search results would show up faster, letting the ISP brag that YouTube doesn’t stutter on their network, a potential commercial advantage over its DSL competitors. Unfortunately, Wired says, the true nature of the Internet infrastructure is guarded by NDAs, so we may never know who owns the pipeline. What do you think? Is YouTube operating for pennies because Google owns so much pipe?

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YouTube: Not So Stupid?