Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

Blogger Play

Here is a site I find interesting. Blogger Play shows a real-time slideshow of images Blogger users are uploading to their Web pages. Because Blogger is global, you get to see images of daily activities around the world. You can stop the show at anytime and go back to a previous image using the player controls.

Most of the images are pretty bad, but quite a few are outstanding. Some of the images can make pretty nice desktops.

Details about the actual blog sites are also available and you can click directly to the blog page with the image.

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BrainStuff

Get you daily dose of useful information at BrainStuff, the HowStuffWorks blog. A May 14 post is “How do they make toilet paper?” Well I never really thought to ask that question, but the video shows it’s really a fascinating process.

Other recent topics include an Israeli electric car, the 150 MPG Loremo, how cocaine submarines work, and the power of subliminal advertising. It’s fun stuff.

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And Now for the New Moustache Tattoo

I want one. Apparently, moustache tattoos are all the rage in Rhode Island, as posted at College Humor.

I really do want one, but I think I’ll limit it to a marker pen version instead of a permanent tattoo.

Do you have a favorite Web site? One that makes you laugh? One that makes you think? Leave a reply below and maybe we’ll post it next Friday.

Our company is known for building Web-based insurance applications. It doesn’t sound very exciting in this world of social networks, Web 2.0, mash-ups, twittering, etc. But an old school market like insurance gives us the opportunity to do ground-breaking work that pretty much only those in that market can look at with awe and wonder. One such opportunity came to us with the new Forrest T. Jones Web site. FTJ, headquartered in Kansas City, is one of the leading providers of insurance and financial service products to members of associations and affinity groups. Working with their visionary marketing department, we built a product-specific, education and enrollment Web site serving tens of thousands of members - all from a single site and one URL! Here’s the breakdown:

• 30+ Carriers
• 80+ Groups/Associations
• 130+ Products

The new site is a matrix-driven portal which means:

• All group/association pages are separately branded.
• All carrier pages are separately branded.
• All members see the right product mix for their association and their state.

It launched on May 12 and took nearly a year to complete. The site uses an online content management system for fast and efficient updates and modifications. Take a test drive if you please. Dig into the menus and enrollment pages. I think we did a pretty good job on the interface. We also put in some nifty calculators for doing estimates.

We love comments and criticism. One reason for this blog is to present our work and get your feedback. Please tell us what you think.

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• Fill out our information request form.
• Review information found on our Web site.
• Contact me directly at 216-674-1600 x118.

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Earlier this week Powerset launched the beta version of its new natural language search. This will make some of the Powerset engineers happy, as they vowed not to shave until their first product was finished. With Powerset, you can perform a search using keyterms, or you can type in a simple sentence as your query. The goal is to improve the way people interact with technology. Currently it provides search capabilities for Wikipedia and Freebase content only, but they do state on their Web site that they will be expanding their product and content offerings in the coming months.

So what makes Powerset search results different from what we are used to seeing as search results? When you perform a search on Powerset, for example “Who is Steve Martin?”, you are not presented with a list of links to various Web sites that may or may not be relevant to your search. Instead, Powerset presents a page that is a mashup of data aggregated from several articles from Wikipedia, and in some cases from both Wikipedia and Freebase.

In this example, the page is split up in three sections. The top is a section of facts from Freebase, presenting the most relevent information for the name searched. Not only do the Freebase results show information for the actor Steve Martin, but you can also click on the different tabs and see information regarding the fictional character Steve Martin from Godzilla, as well as other famous athletes with the same name.

The middle section is the Factz from Wikipedia™ section, which presents information that is compiled across different Wikipedia articles. When you click on any of the words in the section, it will show the relevant article sentence associated with the fact, and provide a link to the Wikipedia article.

The bottom section, Wikipedia Articles, shows a list of links to articles that match your query, with the search results that best match your query highlighted. You can click on any of the links in this section to view the Wikipedia article.

Another interesting feature is the article outline box that appears when you click through to a Wikipedia article. The box is on the right, and moves along the page with you. It shows an outline of the article, with links to the various sections, or you can switch the view to show Factz, showing a list of links of the condensed information within the article.

If you want to see more you can view the demo video, and visit the Powerset blog for more information on product releases. You may view several different query examples on their home page as well.

Also, in case you are wondering, a Powerset is a mathematical term. Given a set S, the powerset of a set S, usually written P(S), is the set of all possible subsets of S.

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• Fill out our information request form.
• Review information found on our Web site.
• Or contact me directly at 216-674-1600 x131.

Have you ever searched for your company’s name in Google and a competitor shows up in the sponsored search results?

I have - and they do. Grrr. You work for years to create your brand and in 0.24 seconds (according to Google) it’s mixed up with a dozen other sponsored search results with people profiting off your success.

But “Hey, they can’t do that! My company name is trademarked!”

Well, according to Google, it all depends on what the competitor is claiming in the ad. If they are simply using your name or product as a search trigger (keyword) and not claiming to be you - that’s legal. If there is any type of deception or if they are using your name in their ad text - that is illegal.

Google has provided a form to file a trademark complaint if your competitor is in fact bidding on your name illegally. Google doesn’t promise to do anything but “perform a limited investigation of reasonable complaints.”

Google makes it very clear it will not disable a keyword in response to a complaint. The trademarked term must be in the ad. They may have a bunch of lawyers on staff, but they aren’t going to do your dirty work for free. Google suggests you contact the offending advertiser directly. Good luck with that! Your legal bills will be more than the loss of business caused by this departure from what is ethically correct.

Wondering if this strategy will change? On May 5, 2008 Google changed its trademark policy in the UK to match the US policy.

I do find it curious though - no trademark owners the likes of Sears, eBay, LLBean, GOOGLE - have any competitors bidding on their names….What are your thoughts?

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Would you like to learn more? You may:

• Fill out our information request form.
• Review information found on our Web site.
• Or contact me directly at 216-674-1600.

I was recently asked, “What kind of on-line marketing can you do with a very small budget?”

While sometimes I wish that all of our clients were Fortune 100 companies with multi-million dollar on-line marketing budgets, some of our clients are small-to-medium size businesses where on-line marketing is new to them. They do not have the budgets, time or resources to devote a lot of attention to running a successful campaign, yet they want big returns on the things they do.

I came across this very situation in March and was able to successfully drive an online marketing strategy with very little budgeted dollars. Here are some tips on ways to run a low-budget online marketing campaign.

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - A targeted PPC campaign with highly relevant long-tail keywords can have a significant impact on your target reach
• Grass Roots - Spend some time to contact bloggers or media members who would like to write an article or do a report on your event. It only takes a few people to get a conversation going around the net
• Find an advertising partner with built up ad inventory - Finding a company who builds up advertising inventory with many sites and then re-sells that inventory to advertisers is a good way to get banner ads or text links on multiple site inexpensively. Sites like AdBrite can help you achieve your goals without the cost of going directly through major sites like MySpace or Yahoo
• Post on friends “Walls” - If your company has profiles setup in MySpace, Facebook or other social networks and has actively been building up a “friends” list, then use that to your advantage. Post a message to all your friends about your event. Send invites out to everyone on your list asking them to visit your site or to pre-register. This can have a big impact on your numbers, especially if you have a lot of friends.
• E-mail - E-mail marketing to existing customers, sales reps, local stores, etc. with a tool like Pulsar can have a big impact on your event. This will enable people who already have an interest in your company, brand or products to come back to your site. Just make sure they have opted-in to receive your communications!

So those are just a few things you can do to make your on-line ventures a success with a small budget. Figure out who your target audience is then give some of these a try. You’ll be surprised at the end result.

To learn more read Jim fisher’s blog post on Marketing Warfare: The Ten Best Ways to Market Your Business Online.

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Would you like to learn more? You may:

• Fill out our information request form
• Review information found on our Web site
• Or contact me directly at 216-674-1600 x120.

I’d like to network with you. Click the LinkedIn box for my profile: