Media news

Throughout the blogosphere, people are commenting on last night’s unconventional political debate hosted by CNN (with a particularly great wrap-up by CNET News.com). In case you missed it, what makes this debate noteworthy — even on an internet marketing blog — is that all the questions were those posed by ordinary Americans posted on YouTube.

While the answers elicited in the debate weren’t that radical, filled with the usual political jargon and runarounds, the questions themselves were personal and direct in a way that those asked by an “expert” host generally are not. The questions covered a spectrum of issues on voter’s minds — from war, to healthcare, to cultural stigmas and some probing questions about candidate’s living habits and families. The faces of ordinary people speaking in plain language about issues passionate to them added a tremendous human element often missing in these kinds of debates, and the astonishing response by users (over 3900 questions were submitted) shows just how important grasping the internet will be to capturing the minds of a growing voting population.

The particularly Web 2.0 element of this whole event, is that long after it happens, it will be blogged about, responded to with more YouTube videos, talked about in chat rooms, forums, and over countless conversations in IM. And, pointing to the curious role that Google has in all of this, try a search for “Youtube CNN Debate” and you’ll see a great example of universal search.

It’s fascinating to watch the web and traditional media continue to butt heads, converge, and ultimately experiment in what media is inevitably becoming. This latest political forum was a great product of this work-in-progress, acknowledging how key the internet is to the lives and opinions of millions.

No shortage of Internet-related news this week: one of the top 10 spammers was arrested, meaning inboxes can rejoice, YouTube will be offering up music videos by EMI artists, and Google raises privacy advocate eyebrows again with street-level photographs that get too close for some to be comfortable.

This week has also seen us spending a lot of time getting to grips with the ever-shifting sands of search trends, the latest being maximizing the way we take advantage of local search. Thanks to some extraordinary articles by SEO by the Sea, I think my mind has stopped spinning about this increasingly important complementary aspect of Internet Marketing. What have I learned? Well, let’s see if I’d pass the test.

Put your company contact information on the web.

Seems like a no-brainer, but Google Local can’t figure out where your business is without you telling it (sort of reminds me of Google Can’t Index Your Intentions). However, we’ve been very good about this, for a variety of reasons throughout the years not related to local search. Yet, our local search results just weren’t popping off the page. What gives?

Define your company contact information properly.

Ahh — the secret revealed. Google prefers you to say field: value, i.e. phone: 123-456-7889 rather than just listing your phone number, so something like this:

Hall Marketing Web Services
15 Pleasant Hill Rd. — P.O. Box 6877
Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB (Toll Free)
207-885-0694 (Local) - 207-883-8189 (Fax)

Becomes:

Hall Marketing Web Services

Physical Address: 15 Pleasant Hill Rd. Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 6877, Scarborough, Maine 04072
Phone (Toll Free): 1-877-HALL-WEB
Phone (Local): 207-885-0694
Fax: 207-883-8189

A little clunkier, but we’re opting to use the format only a page specifically targeted for local search anyways.

Then there’s the issue of user intent.

Another challenge to Local Search at the moment is the fogginess when completely different words may mean the same thing, or determining whether a user is searching for a business name or a general category. At the moment, this is something Google is running at full speed to try and improve upon, which may end up being quick a shake-up for search in general, not just local.

At the moment, we’re shooting to cooperate with Google as much as possible, and if we’re rewarded with a One-Box result at the top of our major keywords, all the better. While Local Search is still incredibly rough around the edges, it keeps improving at an astonishing rate and soon will be regarded as important as traditional organic search, if not more important (for certain kinds of businesses).

And what about Viral?

Finally, I stumbled across Eric Klintz’s blog, the Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP. It’s a pretty impressive title, and while generally major corporate blogs are a little on the tame side, his blog has some really great insight on marketing strategy, as well as generally interesting analysis of things like Web 2.0, viral marketing, quality copywriting, etc. A notch above, and it certainly succeeds in making me think about HP a little differently.

So, keep your eyes on the YouTube, keep at your business blogging, and link out and be linked alike.

Things have been hot for online advertising companies. Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, followed by Yahoo’s $650 million purchase of Right Media. Now Microsoft jumps to prove they’re not out of the online advertising game with a whopping $6 billion purchase of aQuantive in a move to expand their breadth of paid opportunities on web sites, Internet television, video on demand, and other places online.

While Google, Yahoo and MSN all run their own competing search engines with paid opportunities on these engines, the acquisition of these networks shows their vision of a future dominated by new forms of advertising. While paid search is now paid on a per-click basis, the ability to leverage banner ads and ads within rich media offers advertisers the ability to say a whole lot more to their desired audience. To be seen is how much search engines use data about user searches to correspond ads to likely targets — the ability to hone in on target markets is extremely alluring to advertisers, and feared by privacy advocates (Google, at least, says they do not intend to use their search data to improve ad targeting).

Whether the aQuantive purchase will solidify a rather rocky position for Microsoft’s online advertising portals waits to be seen, but the commitment of the Redmond giant to not be outpaced in the industry is clear. And with billions of advertising dollars on the tables, the stakes have never been higher.

Tom Hall with Mike and Laurie Renner at Sage Insights 2007

Well, the 45 degree weather and drizzle was a striking welcome home as we returned road-weary from the Sage Software Insights Trade show in sunny Orlando, Florida. Weather aside, it was still great to be home and we returned with an overflow of ideas and plans for the future based on an action-packed week at Sage Software’s incredibly grand event at the Gaylord Palms Resort.

One of the greatest boons of the Conference was being able to finally meet several of our Sage Software clients, many of whom we’ve worked with for years but through benefit of the Internet hadn’t met with in person. The phrase “I finally have a face to associate with a name” was oft-repeated and we discussed lots of sites and strategies and exciting new technologies that offer great opportunities, for both on and offline marketing efforts.

We also enjoyed the opportunity to talk to dozens of partners throughout the country about what we do and to hand out some 140 shirts (”I went all the way to Orlando and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” was a tremendous hit). One of the things I always enjoy about this kind of event is how being questioned about what you offer so often clarifies in your mind what you really are all about. You quickly find yourself simplifying your pitch to the shortest form possible, while leaving the most positive impression you can. It’s a great exercise that sates the “less is more” writer in me.

With hundreds of booths with a variety of products and services for all sorts of business and management applications, the third-party vendor support for Sage Software is extremely impressive and the people who run it all are some of the friendliest you’ll come across. We definitely look forward to D.C. next year, and continuing to build our relationship with Sage Software and their many partners.