Posted by Manuela Barreto @ November 20th, 2008 in Social Marketing

B2B blogging can be advantageous for a business’s communication strategy for various reasons:

• to keep a close relationship with clients and consumers
• maintain an open dialogue with prospects and clients
• brand promotion and awareness
• boost sales
• increase visibility in search results
• drive traffic
• word-of-mouth
• …

Reasons, there are plenty. The number of Fortune 500 that have embraced blogging since last year has more than doubled. According to Socialtext, a people directory with social networking features who’s co-founder is Chris Anderson (Wired), 12.8% of Fortune 500 have taken up blogging today.

This is just a sample of some of the company’s included in this 12.8%, click here to view the entire list.

Included on this list are the links to the different blogs, some have multiple blogs, plus any review that has been written about them. B2B marketing holds an immense amount of valuable content that should be exposed and available to all so that communities may begin to form as contributors add valuable information to them.

Because ‘marketing crisis’, ‘how to market in times of recession’ and the likes have become quiet popular search queries on Google these past months, B2B blogs can serve as a way to demonstrate thought leaders and bring new ideas to the table while establishing corporate credibility.

SocialText has also put together a document discussing the corporate approach to blogging. It’s a good guide where a group of random blogs are selected into writing styles and content style. This way corporations have a wide variety of approaches to analyze and consider for when plunging themselves in this new media universe.

Posted by Manuela Barreto @ November 19th, 2008 in Search Engine Marketing

Let Google help you. The new tool recently launched by Google, the Search-based keyword tool(beta), basically helps advertisers spot the ‘unused’ keywords consumers enter when conducting a search for their products. In other words, it prevents marketers from overlooking certain terms and suggests them to be added into their search campaign.

The tool is currently available in the UK and the US and what is does is help leverage search query data by providing businesses with a list of key terms that are not included in the AdWords campaign but which hold great relevance to the particular site.

A positive aspect of this tool is that it pinpoints words that are not being advertised on but that can bring an increase to a businesses’ ROI. Once you’ve discovered the missing words, you can redefine your campaign based on the search trends provided by the new feature.

The way it works as explained by the Inside AdWords blog, ‘the search engine starts with searches conducted by users and helps them find relevant pages. But for keyword targeting, what you want is a tool that goes in the opposite direction by starting with your pages and identifying keywords that potential customers are searching on to find your products or services.’

The Google Keyword tool will be expanding to other languages and different countries in the near future.

For more in-depth details on this new tool, try out www.searchengineland.com.

Posted by Manuela Barreto @ November 18th, 2008 in Viral Marketing

Let the Motrin ad backlash be a lesson to those who think ‘viral’ is always a good thing.

Viral equals a positive message. There can be good viral campaigns and bad viral campaigns. The reputation crisis which detonated this past weekend which was witnessed by just about every single mom-blogger existent in the blogosphere gives us the bad version of it.

For those of you who happened to be away from your computers, here’s a quick sum up. The McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of J&J, launched an offline/online campaign sending what was obviously, the wrong message to current and future moms.

The advice to moms: “take Motrin to ease the agonizing pain caused from carrying your (innocent and beautiful) baby on your back all the time”

The reply from moms- 48 hrs. after campaign was put online: “How dare you, Motrin!”

Within hours both Twitter and YouTube were flooded with anti-Motrin remarks and anti-Motrin videos. Every single mom in the blogoshere made sure her voice was heard by the people back in McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Take a look at how the online reputation crisis for Motrin was like over the weekend:

Motrin eventually pulled the ad and offered their sincere apologies, as still displayed on the Motrin site.

The Motrin case serves as more than valuable evidence that social networks have an immeasurable potential and really do work. As a colleague of mine says, social media really brings ‘power to the people-we better think twice before publishing any kind of message up on the Web’.

Most importantly, companies today should have a very clear idea who their messages are intended for and know exactly what their target audience is and not just assume that ‘moms feel pain from wearing their babies’.

Posted by Manuela Barreto @ November 17th, 2008 in Search Engine Marketing

To all Google Site Search users, Google has introduced a new feature dubbed On-Demand Indexing which allows businesses to update, make live changes and add pages on-demand indexed by site search, readily available to all customers.

This will ensure that the newest information and Web pages appear on the search results of the company’s webiste seconds after it has been modified.

This is crucial for all companies running their own websites, because as we know, when people look for the latest news and information usually they want it asap. Failing to do so means loosing a customer who’s obviously not satisfied with the company’s efficiency in providing the information that is being sought for.

According to Google, it’s new On-Demand Indexing provides:

• Site owners get an “Index Now” button to quickly and easily update their site search results with new and updated content.

• New pages are searchable within hours - taking no longer than a day to appear within site search results.

Thanks to this new indexing system, businesses are now in complete control of the information they wish to update whether it’s a product launch, major acquisition, quarterly reports- the ‘Index Now’ button provided, does all the magic.

Anyone owning a website can take advantage of this On-Demand feature, all they need to do is sign up for Google Site Search. For more information about On-Demand Indexing, and how Google Site Search can help your online business or website, check out the Google Enterprise Blog.

Posted by Anna Chertkova @ November 14th, 2008 in Media News

Wall Street Journal announced that Joel Podolny, Dean of Yale University’s School of Management, was hired by Apple Inc. to start a project called Apple University as vice president and dean.

Apple declined to provide information either on the university or on the new position. Mr. Podolny abandoned the position as dean of Yale’s business school in November, however, he will still be working at Yale for what rests of the year, according to a Yale’s spokeswoman and will take over the new position at Apple University at the beginning of 2009.

One might suggest that Apple will be needing a formal training centre for sales staff of the Apple Store (since they are selling worldwide) or for Apple experts of the Best Buy shops network: but in this case Apple hardly needs the dean of a business school to do the training.

Apple might also see it as a school for IT administrators or programmers working on iPhone and OS X platforms, but, again, where does Mr. Podolny, an expert in sociology and management, come in handy here? Or is it that they need the dean in capacity of a consultant on psychology & management?

According to one person who claims to be familiar with the matter, Apple University is “intended broadly as an HR type function for developing leadership and other required skills and knowledge within the organization”. So, what is Apple University all about? Apple University may serve as a company’s training division, thus mirroring a similar program as that of Pixar. In fact, corporate universities offering training for staff members are a common practice within large corporations now.

One of the most famous ones is McDonald’s Hamburger University where thousands of employees attend classes every year. Pixar Animation Studios has one as well, where Steve Jobs was the largest shareholder before the studio was sold to Walt Disney Co. in 2006.

And last but not the least, there is 77Academy, a highly selective training course in new media marketing for talented graduates coming from top business schools and Universities, offered by 77Agency, a leading independent new media agency.