Clocks on computers, VCRs and other reputedly “smart” devices left a lot of people confused when they automatically switched from Daylight Savings to standard time before they were supposed to. That’s because Congress moved the changeover by a week.

» E-Mail This     href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Ftemplates%2Fstory%2Fstory.php%3FstoryId%3D15817040">» Add to Del.icio.us

Online retail sales are growing by all accounts—but, paradoxically, this is somehow translated as a negative for the industry, indicating that it’s “immature.”
Of course, there’s the good news:

Online retail sales in the United States jumped 23 percent, to US$28.4 billion, during the third quarter of this year compared with the same July-September period in 2006.

The retail surge was led by sales of video games, consoles and accessories, which showed a year-to-year increase of 199 percent.

And the not-so-good news (emphasis mine):

“Online retail spending continues to grow at rates in excess of 20 percent year-over-year, which suggests that the market is still far from maturity,” comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said. “Even online travel commerce, which is a more developed market, continues to experience double-digit gains.”

Of course, a lack a maturity in an industry doesn’t mean that it’s more liable to talk back, flounce off to sulk and slam the door behind it. Despite these negative connotations, the immaturity of an industry may only indicate that we can expect a lot more growth spurts from it.

But you know if online retail slowed even the slightest bit—even if its growth were only in the single digits—naysayers would come out of the woodwork from every quadrant to tell us that they knew eCommerce was a fad.

Pilgrim Partners: Pre-order Andy’s new book - Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online

Kaynak: Jordan McCollum >>

InterActiveCorp, owners of such diverse properties as the Home Shopping Network, Evite, Match.com, TicketMaster, CitySearch and perennial favorite underdog search engine Ask.com, released their Q3 numbers today—and their total numbers aren’t so good:

Profit fell 4.2 percent. . . . Profit for the quarter ended Sept. 30 fell to $71.8 million, or 24 cents per share, from $74.9 million, or 24 cents per share, last year.

However, there is good news. Apparently, the home shopping industry is turning around! What? I know that you’re up watching those informercials at 3 AM.

Oh, and the revenue of the media and advertising unit (which includes Ask.com) is up 40%. While that wouldn’t be good enough for Google (who was, if you’ll recall, a “failure” with only 58% growth in Q2), this is Ask, people!

IAC said that “Ask.com revenue grew, due to an increase in revenue per query and queries.”

This is good news all around—not just for Ask and IAC. Any search engine that can gain ground in number of queries and revenue per query is a reminder that Google hasn’t quite cornered the market and those other guys still have a place in the market.

The media & advertising unit saw $189.8 M in revenue this quarter, up from $135.5 M in Q3 2006. Their operating income (including amortization) came to $15.4 M, which doesn’t sound like much compared to their revenue, but is quite a bit of an improvement over the $2.1M loss reported last year.

As long as the rest of the company doesn’t come crashing down around them, it appears that Ask.com is doing something right!

Pilgrim Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Kaynak: Jordan McCollum >>

Halloween is a big holiday for spending. Reports that the figure is between $5-7 billion in spending and the average adult spends $65 on the holiday. Just ask Kate Maloney who at 26 made the Inc 500 list as founder and CEO of Costume Craze.

Here’s how Halloween spending breaks down: $21 for candy, $12 for cards and $38.50 for costumes (see this post on popular costumes for the season). Halloween decorating is also a big industry, second only to Christmas. Unity Marketing says decoration sales grew 21 percent to $3.2 billion in 2006 over 2005.

I always enjoy how into Halloween and other holidays Google gets. I wish other retailers would follow suit. My question of the day - why the restaurant The Melting Pot doesn’t make a Halloween version of fondue. Yes, my site has a touch of Halloween all year round.

What is Halloween about for you? For me, forget candy, it’s all about the costumes. No other day of the year can you see an overweight man with a beard in a purple cape and underwear walking across the grocery store parking lot. I love the little bird costume I saw on a toddler with her teetering legs in tights poking out the bottom. It’s creativity that everyone can see.

Happy Howling!

Pilgrim Partners: Why Do You Read Marketing Pilgrim? - tell the world why you read MP & get a free link & enter to win $500!

Kaynak: Janet Meiners >>

By Manoj Jasra

Microsoft Corp. and SEMPO Institute, www.sempoinstitute.com, announced today an education alliance in which personnel from 20,000 affiliates of the MSN search engine will have access to SEMPO Institute’s online learning program designed to provide in-depth knowledge of best-practices in search engine marketing.

As part of the new alliance, personnel from the MSN affiliates will be able to take SEMPO Institute’s Fundamentals of Search Marketing class.  SEMPO Institute also offers online classes in Advanced Search Engine Optimization and Advanced Search Advertising.  Fundamentals consists of 14 lessons intended to give the student a high level understanding of the essentials of search engine marketing.

Since SEMPO Institute launched in early 2007, the student feedback has been very positive – 80% say they would recommend the Fundamentals course. “All companies need the fundamentals of search marketing in order to implement an e-marketing strategy,” says SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt. 

Additionally Microsoft has chosen to renew its Platinum sponsorship level for another two years. “The participation of companies such as Microsoft helps SEMPO be in tune with the needs of our professional members, and helps to generate innovative programs such as the SEMPO Institute,” - SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt. 

Yesterday I was able to catch up with SEMPO’s Manager of Business Development, Katie Donovan, to get first hand insight on the latest news:

[Manoj Jasra]: How does SEMPO’s new alliance with Microsoft help SEMPO?

[Katie Donovan]: Microsoft has been a sponsor of SEMPO for some time. Microsoft’s sponsorship renewal for another two years indicates how important the search engines find SEMPO as a professional organization whose members come from more than 630 companies in over 30 countries. We are able to provide access, insight, and feedback from the professionals who are using the search engines. In the same manner, providing access to the search engines is an amazing benefit for our members.
The alliance for our Fundamentals of Search Marketing course to Microsoft affiliates help SEMPO Institute grow awareness of our courses very quickly. Microsoft’s support of the course for their affiliate education program gives added credibility to SEMPO Institute’s courses as an critical resource for search marketers.

[Manoj Jasra]: Is SEMPO actively pursuing alliances, is this something Yahoo or Google would be interested in?

[Katie Donovan]: SEMPO has various alliances and sponsor relationships. Microsoft is SEMPO’s Platinum Sponsor and as such benefits from perks not available to all sponsors. Microsoft and SEMPO may opt to expand this relationship to additional courses and/or affiliates. SEMPO may also decide to roll this type of program out to Yahoo or Google at a later dates. For the time being, as our Platinum Sponsor Microsoft is enjoying a courtesy period of exclusivity.

[Manoj Jasra]: With 80% of people saying that they would recommend SEMPO’s fundamentals course, how will SEMPO try to grow that number even higher?

[Katie Donovan]: SEMPO Institute strives to meet the students and the employers needs with our courses. We are happy with the 80% rate of recommendation but want to grow it even higher. We currently are conducting research to see what adjustments can be made to help grow that number. We will review the results and make informed decisions when the results are available.

Pilgrim Partners: Drive Quality Traffic to Your Website - Get $25 in free clicks when you open an account today.

Kaynak: Guest >>

MarketingSherpa just ran a great article on how to market yourself or business on Facebook. As they point out the approach to marketing in a social community takes a little different approach than marketing in other contexts. Offend the community means you won’t be trusted.

It goes like this. Imagine going to church and thinking that there are a lot of people in your potential market there. So you decide to make an announcement about a big sale at your store. Everyone feels uncomfortable. It’s happened to me and it was in bad taste.

Facebook is a community of 46 million members, it’s growing by 3% a week since January, especially with the 25 and older demographic. I’ve noticed more and more friends joining in the past few weeks.

MarketingSherpa interviewed Kaplan and Neil Patel, who is Chief Technical Officer at ACS, a social media marketing and search engine optimization agency to see how to best optimize for Facebook. I’ve added some of my thoughts below.

Your Profile and URL
Every social network with a profile page can be an opportunity to brand yourself or your business. I don’t know if Facebook lets you do this (my profile is http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=626820159) but many social networks like MySpace will give you a custom URL. So I could be http://www.facebook.com/newspapergrl.

Also, create a separate profile for your business. If you’re an unknown, use one of your main keywords in the URL such as http://www.facebook.com/SEOcopywriting

Put links to articles you’ve written, to your LinkedIn profile, and to any articles about you. Talk about successes and specific goals.

I thought this was well-put: “If you say, ‘I’m looking for a job,’ people have a hard time with that. If you say, ‘I’m looking for a job with a PR firm based in New York in the entertainment industry,’ that’s more specific. You have to be very clear what your intentions are. Be very specific about what you’re looking for and people will help you, just like any part of life,” Kaplan says.

Join a Facebook Group
You can create or join groups on Facebook and share information with others. I checked out the biggest internet marketing group and it was full of advertising everything from an MLM to want-to-be-rich-quick internet gurus. But there are groups that are active and professional.

After you join a group, you can text-message other members, send them emails, comment on their profiles or contact them. You’d be surprised at the range of types of groups there are.

Buy Advertising Space
I didn’t know this but you can buy an ad on Facebook. It’s called Facebook Flyers Basic so you can create banner-like advertising on networks. This is a great way to target advertising to a specific demographic.

Facebook also Flyers Pro — a cost-per-click advertising program that’s triggered by keyword searches (like Google AdWords). The article has more in-depth tips on how to do this and I’d be interested if anyone reading this has tried either advertising method.

Pilgrim Partners: Drive Quality Traffic to Your Website - Get $25 in free clicks when you open an account today.

Kaynak: Janet Meiners >>

There’s a lot of waste in the computer industry. IBM has developed a solution that takes scrap silicon disks and makes them into solar panels.

Computer chips are made of silicon wafers that have to be perfect to be usable. Imperfect wafers are thrown away after sensitive data is removed. Now, with a new process by inventor Eric White, they can be reused and made into solar panels.

Not only are the wafers being salvaged but the process for cleaning them is also improved. No more harsh acid. IBM has been sandblasting the chips instead. But now they use an even cleaner process that uses water and an abrasive pad. Eric White invented the process and says with the new technology they can get five or six monitor wafers out from one that otherwise would have been crushed and discarded.

They sell cleaned wafers to the solar-cell industry, which has a high demand for silicon to make solar panels. Not only is this a smart move for the environment, but it saves money (hopefully more companies will follow suit). IBM started using the process at its Burlington, Vermont location and last year it saved them over $500,000. Now it’s employing the process at another location in New York and estimate a savings of over $1.5 million. These are IBM’s semiconductor manufacturing sites.

Each year the semiconductor industry discards as many as 3 million wafers worldwide according to IBM. Now all IBM needs to do to bring this full circle is buy back those solar panels and install them in all their offices.

Pilgrim Partners: Pre-order Andy’s new book - Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online

Kaynak: Janet Meiners >>

Upgrading to the latest version of OS X could leave a Mac less secure than it was before.

Kaynak: Andy Beal >>

Google is no longer just a search engine. With your potential customers, future employers, and members of the media turning to Google for information about your business, Google has become a reputation engine.

In helping clients with their online reputation, I’m consistently asked how they can push out negative content that appears on the first page of Google for a search for their name. Whether they were fined by the SEC, ridiculed by an ex-employee, or investigated by their local newspaper, they share one common goal: get that negative result off of the first page!

Of course, it’s near on impossible to make a negative Google result simply disappear—although there are some black-hat SEOs that claim to have that gift. Instead, your best approach is to provide Googlebot with a healthier diet of web content that shows your reputation in a positive light.

On that note, here are my recommendations for the best web content to fill up the first page of Google results.

1. Get your own web site.

It sounds simply enough, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, you’d be surprised at the number of individuals and companies that haven’t registered their own branded domain name and thrown up a web site. Registering yourcompanyname.com or yourpersonalname.com and adding a basic web site is a sure-fire way to occupy one of the top ten Google listings for your name.

2. Start a blog.

If you love and nurture a blog, it will likely become a great asset in your reputation management arsenal. But the great thing about a blog is that it tends to rank well, even when left un-watered. Blogs are the cactus of online content. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com both provide free blogs and free hosting. Add just a few posts, keep it targeted to your name—that means use it in the blog title, posts etc—add a few links and bake for a few days. It will be on the first page of Google in no time.

3. Add a sub-domain.

If you’ve put a lot of effort into growing your main web site, chances are there’s an opportunity to add a sub-domain. Sub-domains are great. Google considers them as separate from your main site, but they still include your main brand. There are a lot of great reasons to add a sub-domain: careers, corporate info, and product info. Take a look at jobs.marketingpilgrim.com as an example.

4. Create a social networking profile.

MySpace.com profiles can rank well for your personal or company name. When you sign-up, be sure to use your real name—using a nickname won’t help with your Google reputation—and enable the option that lets you pick the URL of your profile. myspace.com/companyname works a whole lot better than myspace.com/12345678.

5. Create your own social network.

If a social networking profile ranks well in Google, how much more so your own social network? Ning.com will let you create your own customized social network. Better yet, you can pay just $5 a month and point your own domain name at it. Take a look at www.marketingpilgrim.tv for an example.

6. Create a business profile.

You should join LinkedIn.com because it’s a great tool for networking with your peers. You should also join LinkedIn as it allows you to talk about yourself, link to your other Google-friendly web content, and customize your profile URL. Wouldn’t you rather your potential employer find your LinkedIn profile on Google, than that run-in you had with your last boss?

7. Share your photos.

Flickr.com is very Google friendly. Upload photos of you, your company logo, your products, etc, and label them using your name. Add some comments to each photo (including your name) and Voila! You’ve just added a dozen pages of content, each labeled with your company name! Be sure to do the same when selecting your profile name for Flickr too.

8. Claim your identity.

Naymz.com is a blessing for those looking to control their Google reputation. It effectively lets you create a profile and then link out to all of your other profiles. Whereas LinkedIn is heavy on the networking-side, Naymz is more of a holding-tank for your brand. Best of all, Google seems to love it!

9. Create your own Wiki.

If you’re facing a Google reputation nightmare, you may be tempted to create a Wikipedia profile for yourself. After all, Wikipedia ranks all over Google, right? Bad move. Not only is it hard to get one approved, but they’re totally unbiased. That DUI incident, you’re trying to cover-up, will likely make its way on to your profile. Not good. Instead create your own wiki and build your profile that way. Wetpaint.com is perfect for this. You can focus it on your personal name, or your company name. The best part is that you get to decide who contributes to it.

10. Get a free page from Google.

I’ve saved the best until last. Ok, I lied. While a free page from Google Page Creator (googlepages.com) isn’t the best web content for managing your Google reputation, there’s something satisfying about having Google help mend your reputation.

So, there you have it. While these shouldn’t be used as a “get out of jail free card”—you should avoid a reputation nightmare to begin with—they’ll at least help you re-build your Google reputation.

Like this advice? There are a lot more secrets revealed in my new online reputation management book.

(This article was first published by Andy on Gooruze. Don’t miss other great articles, join Gooruze today!)

digg_url = \’http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/10/google-reputation-management .html\’;

Pilgrim Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Kaynak: Andy Beal >>

Google is no longer just a search engine. With your potential customers, future employers, and members of the media turning to Google for information about your business, Google has become a reputation engine.

In helping clients with their online reputation, I’m consistently asked how they can push out negative content that appears on the first page of Google for a search for their name. Whether they were fined by the SEC, ridiculed by an ex-employee, or investigated by their local newspaper, they share one common goal: get that negative result off of the first page!

Of course, it’s near on impossible to make a negative Google result simply disappear—although there are some black-hat SEOs that claim to have that gift. Instead, your best approach is to provide Googlebot with a healthier diet of web content that shows your reputation in a positive light.

On that note, here are my recommendations for the best web content to fill up the first page of Google results.

1. Get your own web site.

It sounds simply enough, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, you’d be surprised at the number of individuals and companies that haven’t registered their own branded domain name and thrown up a web site. Registering yourcompanyname.com or yourpersonalname.com and adding a basic web site is a sure-fire way to occupy one of the top ten Google listings for your name.

2. Start a blog.

If you love and nurture a blog, it will likely become a great asset in your reputation management arsenal. But the great thing about a blog is that it tends to rank well, even when left un-watered. Blogs are the cactus of online content. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com both provide free blogs and free hosting. Add just a few posts, keep it targeted to your name—that means use it in the blog title, posts etc—add a few links and bake for a few days. It will be on the first page of Google in no time.

3. Add a sub-domain.

If you’ve put a lot of effort into growing your main web site, chances are there’s an opportunity to add a sub-domain. Sub-domains are great. Google considers them as separate from your main site, but they still include your main brand. There are a lot of great reasons to add a sub-domain: careers, corporate info, and product info. Take a look at jobs.marketingpilgrim.com as an example.

4. Create a social networking profile.

MySpace.com profiles can rank well for your personal or company name. When you sign-up, be sure to use your real name—using a nickname won’t help with your Google reputation—and enable the option that lets you pick the URL of your profile. myspace.com/companyname works a whole lot better than myspace.com/12345678.

5. Create your own social network.

If a social networking profile ranks well in Google, how much more so your own social network? Ning.com will let you create your own customized social network. Better yet, you can pay just $5 a month and point your own domain name at it. Take a look at www.marketingpilgrim.tv for an example.

6. Create a business profile.

You should join LinkedIn.com because it’s a great tool for networking with your peers. You should also join LinkedIn as it allows you to talk about yourself, link to your other Google-friendly web content, and customize your profile URL. Wouldn’t you rather your potential employer find your LinkedIn profile on Google, than that run-in you had with your last boss?

7. Share your photos.

Flickr.com is very Google friendly. Upload photos of you, your company logo, your products, etc, and label them using your name. Add some comments to each photo (including your name) and Voila! You’ve just added a dozen pages of content, each labeled with your company name! Be sure to do the same when selecting your profile name for Flickr too.

8. Claim your identity.

Naymz.com is a blessing for those looking to control their Google reputation. It effectively lets you create a profile and then link out to all of your other profiles. Whereas LinkedIn is heavy on the networking-side, Naymz is more of a holding-tank for your brand. Best of all, Google seems to love it!

9. Create your own Wiki.

If you’re facing a Google reputation nightmare, you may be tempted to create a Wikipedia profile for yourself. After all, Wikipedia ranks all over Google, right? Bad move. Not only is it hard to get one approved, but they’re totally unbiased. That DUI incident, you’re trying to cover-up, will likely make its way on to your profile. Not good. Instead create your own wiki and build your profile that way. Wetpaint.com is perfect for this. You can focus it on your personal name, or your company name. The best part is that you get to decide who contributes to it.

10. Get a free page from Google.

I’ve saved the best until last. Ok, I lied. While a free page from Google Page Creator (googlepages.com) isn’t the best web content for managing your Google reputation, there’s something satisfying about having Google help mend your reputation.

So, there you have it. While these shouldn’t be used as a “get out of jail free card”—you should avoid a reputation nightmare to begin with—they’ll at least help you re-build your Google reputation.

(This article was first published on Gooruze. Don’t miss other great articles, join Gooruze today!)

Pilgrim Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Kaynak: Andy Beal >>