• Bazaarvoice Syndicates Merchant Reviews to Portals
  (tags: syndication ecommerce bazaarvoice online+marketing)
• Green tech powers forward
  CNET special section on green technology.
  (tags: green+tech green+technology clean+technology research)
• Widgify
  Widgets are the new websites.
  (tags: Blogs Tools widget widgets)

• RED HERRING | Blogs Start Job Boards
  (tags: blogs startups web+2.0 job+sites online+jobs blog+2.0)

When Outdoor advertising is done right, it gets noticed. I stumbled on Frederick Samuel’s site when it was referred to in one of my marketing and advertising RSS feeds. He does a nice job aggregating some of the best and worst designs around the globe.

Copy: Orbit leaves your mouth feeling clean :: via Advertising for Peanuts Blog

tags: advertising, outdoor+advertising, viral+marketing

One of the greatest things about what we do is the variety of clients we get to work with. One of our favorite gigs is working with DJ Dave From London. We’re in the process of redesigning some of Dave’s properties and one of the bi-products is the work Glenn’s doing on his promo card. It really captures the essence of Dave’s high tech style. He’s one of the few mobile DJs that feature a full multimedia experience, with big screens and all the cool videos. Let Dave know about your next party..it’s a helluva show.

tags: dallas+entertainment, mobile+djs, disc+jockeys, dallas, video+dj

• Twango - Media Sharing
  (tags: community media photos social storage tools video web web2.0)
• HitTail - Free Keywords
  (tags: advertising content marketing Tools web2.0 search seo optimization longtail)

It used to be you’d ask people, “what’s your internet strategy”? Today, it sounds more like, “what’s your Google strategy”? Companies of all sizes are figuring out the old world of marketing and advertising has changed dramatically. Think about it, a few years ago the notion of having customers find you was daunting. How could someone across the continent learn about your product without being touched by a global advertising campaign or luckily stumbling upon your website?

Fast Forward to Google Strategy 2006.

Take Shark Diver, a San Francisco adventure-travel company that Patric Douglas founded in 2000. Shark Diver (sharkdiver.com) arranges tours to tropical locales worldwide where shark fans can frolic underwater with their favorite predators. Douglas, 38, estimates that at most, 100,000 people in the U.S. possess the requisites for this pursuit: diving experience and a crazy streak. By bidding on search terms such as “cage diving” in Google auctions, he has been able to zero in on his target market. Shark Diver is now a profitable business with 20 employees and about $1 million in annual revenues, according to Douglas.

Google has put the pressure on businesses to get their ship in order. If you don’t have a website, guess what, you can’t run Google AdWords. And if your website isn’t constructed to be Google-friendly, your competitors will leapfrog you in the all important organic search results. It’s not all doom and gloom though. When you expand online, you learn a heck of a lot about your business. The act of writing an advertisement for your product or service is a great exercise. It’s amazing what comes to light when you write a headline about your own product or service. You quickly see how exciting unexciting your product may be on the wild web.

Another exercise that’s just as important is figuring out the search terms customers would use to find you. By testing different search terms, you’ll have the ammunition you need to think up new advertising campaigns or better yet, you’ll see the competitors in your market appear right on your screen.

Pay attention to Google. Your next competitor is lurking in all those results.

tags: Google, organic+search, paid+search, seo, sem, search+engine, Google+AdWords, Google+adsense, AdWords, adsense, search+engine+marketing, marketing, advertising,google+strategy

• Google Can Make Or Break Your Company
  (tags: Business Google marketing)
• Take your Google calendar offline.
  (tags: Google calendar online+calendar web2.0 calgoo)

 This is what the web’s all about. Content and applications for the taking, all packaged and delivered in a nifty wrapper. WidgetBox makes it easy for you to grab some of the latest web service trinkets. Typically you’d have to troll all sorts of websites to get the code needed to spruce up your website or blog. Now you can browse their gallery, preview the widget, and automatically insert the code into a “panel” on your blog or website. You can think of their panels as switchable billboards of sorts, giving you the capability to hot swap different widgets on your blog panels.
I took the Yahoo News and Delicious linkroll widgets for a test spin and had problems with Delicious in IE 6, so I shot off an email to support. In less than an hour I was informed of some minor wrinkles being worked out. Nice follow-up.

tags: widgetbox, web2.0, widgets, web+services

• The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator
  Dotcom-ish lingo returns in the form of Web 2.0
  (tags: web2.0 generator AJAX humor internet marketing)
• The Coffee Office
  Caffeine and a place to hang your hat.
  (tags: office office+space mobile+warrior internet+cafe)
• Widgetbox
  The Technorati and Digg widgets look good.
  (tags: blog Tools web2.0 widgets)

The big three on today’s web – Blogs, RSS, and Podcasts - took a punch in the stomach recently when data was released from Jupiter Research, WorkPlace Print Media, and Keller Fay.

Highlights include:

7% of American adults write blogs 

22% read blogs

8% listen to podcasts

5% use RSS feeds

88% of business users didn’t know about RSS

And to top it off, word-of-mouth research group Keller Fay said 92% of brand conversations take place offline.

The RSS numbers don’t surprise me. Until RSS is baked into Microsoft’s OS, your general consumer will never see it or care about it. In B2B scenarios, I think RSS adoption is increasing faster. That’s partly because content management vendors are incorporating RSS into their web architectures.

Blogs and podcasts are a bit different. Clients many times still see blogs as superfluous in a lot of ways. They have a hard time seeing how blogs start conversations with their customers. But at least most are realizing that blogs provide a way to fire back at unfounded claims or customer service woes. Heck, the way blogs propel you up the search engines should be reason enough to take the plunge.

On the podcast stats, I think low usage can be tied directly to lack of content. Granted, there do seem to be podcastiong sites popping up everyday, but I question the quality of what’s being produced. When big brands and media companies truly start podcasting everything, you’ll see end-user adoption skyrocket. I think the average user still has a hard time understanding all the mechanics of a podcast. 

Bottom line: Start experimenting with all three. You’ll soon find a way to incorporate some facet of one of these into your growth strategy.

tags: blogs, podcasts, rss, marketing, advertising, web2.0, internet+marketing, seo, search+engines

• 17 MS Office Killers
  More “death of MSFT office” predictions.
  (tags: office microsoft microsoft+office web+office web2.0 google)
• Feed Crier :: RSS Feeds via instant message
  (tags: web2.0 RSS feedcrier)
• Ad Age - Marketing Reality Check: Blogs, Pods, RSS
  Story about RSS and Podcast adoption.
  (tags: podcasts rss blogs marketing media advertising)
• Building a Web Presence on the Cheap
  (tags: small+business websites online+advertising online+marketing ecommerce)
• Research Shows Blogs, Wikis, Forums Sway Consumer Opinion
  Buyers looking for other users’ opinions on blogs/social networks.
  (tags: Blogs Wiki community Collaboration ecommerce word-of-mouth)

For those of you wondering when the enviable Google shopping cart will show up next to your AdWords ad, this post is for you. We completed our first Google Checkout transaction a few weeks ago and within hours our cart arrived. Sell something and ye shall receive.

tags: google, google+checkout, paypal, ecommerce, antiques, adwords, online+marketing, online+advertising

Podcasting News points to stats from Marketing Sherpa showing the increasing importance of blogs and podcasts in your marketing strategy. According to the 1900 marketing execs surveyed, the top five tools are free trials, webcasts, white papers, blogs and podcasts.

Technorati Tags : blogs, podcasts, marketing, web2.0, lead+generation, sales+tools