Thank God It’s Friday. And if you are going to the Blogger Happy Hour in San Francisco after User Research Friday, I’ll see ya then.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Technology Enables Product Placement in CGM – New term alert: Plinking – “Plinking is the process of adding a product or service link to a visible object or image in a video. When deployed, it will have an interface for users to upload and tag video. Users will freeze a single frame and define an area where the product is located. It can be any product from an iPod to particular jacket or pair of jeans. Once tagged, the item will be clickable throughout the runtime of the video, and will link to an e-commerce page.”
• MySpace, ByeSpace – Registrations are slowing has critical mass been reached? Or have all the older people showing up slowed signups? Or is it that the spammers have been stopped. (Via: iMedia Connection) “There’s no question, however, that MySpace’s recent popularity has brought with it a proliferation of spam that has annoyed some users. Many advertisers take advantage of the “friend request” function and send out requests that are really just advertisements. And programs have cropped up that can automatically send mass friend requests to MySpace users — in short, a new generation of email spam.”
• An Introduction to Microformats (via: Micropersuasion) “Microformats are small and gentle syntactic touch-ups for your web pages. They have one major purpose: to make your data readable by both man and machine. They are the technical diplomats of the Web; allowing the same piece of data to be shared among many applications and people.” Ever since I first heard about Microformats on a Social Media Club podcast, I’ve been intrigued. This is one of those posts that I will have to print out and read over the weekend. A good example of a Microformat is the XFN (XHTML Friends Network) which I never realized this was a Microformat.
  
• Kickstarting RSS: How to Make the Right Decisions to Reach Your Target Market: “In this article, we look at five such issues that you should consider in planning your feed marketing communications.

1. Deliver Relevant Content By Identifying and Targeting Your Audience
2. Don’t Confuse Your Customer By Offering Too Many Feed Choices
3. Content Strategy Can Affect Subscription Levels and Loyalty
4. Know how often you will update your feed
5. Make Sure Your Website Visitors Find Your Feeds”

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• Long List of Link Searches – Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, does it again – he has created yet another highly linkworthy piece on using Link Searches for Competitive Intelligence.
• Advertising Mix n’ Match: Examining the Coalescence of Branding and Search Engines Online “A survey conducted by The Dieringer Research Group found 45% of adults say their brand opinions have changed as a result of advertising and other product information found online.”
• Second Life Takes Off, Gains Interest of Older Generation
• Wiki Showdown at Web SIG

“Finally the weekend’s come and everything is goin’ down” – Thank God It’s Friday - R. Kelly

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

Not everyone needs a MySpace page, but everyone should have a MySpace page.” I said this at a recent conference and I could see the confused looks on faces. How could I in one breath tell the audience that they do not need a MySpace profile page, but tell them to get a MySpace profile?

Well in less than three years MySpace has now grown to the point where it is sending more traffic to ecommerce sites than MSN - I’m surprised that MSN didn’t issue it’s own press release the same way that Yahoo did when numbers said that it was being beaten in traffic by MySpace. (See: Yahoo - How dare you say MySpace has more Traffic) My point, who knows where MySpace will be in another 2 years…

In the same way that people squatted on domains of major brands, people are signing up for profile names of major brands (this may not be on purpose, as a person’s nickname may be the same as a brand name). People out there can easily sign up for www.MySpace.com/YourBrand in a jiff…. and if they did, boy could they go to town on your brand.

While I think that URLs for MySpace promotions should be named by the campaign, you may want to do some due diligence and secure your MySpace Brand URLs to ensure that the URL doesn’t get taken. Even if you never use it, better to have it in your name than have someone else using your brand URL.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• AOL Launches Developer Program for AOL Video Search Engine - “Through its new AOL Video Search developer program , AOL has made available a set of open video search APIs (application programming interfaces) as well as implemented a system for video content owners to submit feeds to the AOL Video Search index through new AOL Director Accounts. For content owners looking to broaden the distribution of their video content, the AOL(R) Director Account program is a free, first-of-its-kind offering for site owners and content publishers to submit feeds to AOL Video Search. Unlike other video search engines, this fully self-service online sign-up and feed management system enables users to make their self-hosted videos easily searchable across the AOL Video Search network within minutes of being submitted.” SEOs start your engines…. I see new articles on Video SEO in the near future - lol. See also: Sponsored Video OK For Three-Fourths of Users: “71% of U.S. Internet users who watch online video prefer to watch and download videos for free, sponsored by pre-roll advertising.”
• B-to-B Web Sales Outnumber B-to-C Web Sales. “This year’s Abacus Business-to-Business Industry Insights Report shows that 40 percent of B-to-B sales occurred via the Web in 2005, a 16 percent increase year over year. These results indicate that B-to-B customers purchase online nearly 10 percent more than B-to-C consumers, who chose to purchase over the Web 31 percent of the time in 2005. The differences between business and consumer purchasing habits support what most marketers have long recognized: business purchases exhibit a different dynamic than consumer purchases.” Ok, does anyone have the actual report, I can’t find it on their website… and I have to see these numbers for myself. See also: Business Searching Beats Sex Queries & Who’s Handing Out The Query Data?
• And speaking of Flex and Search Engine Marketing… Making SEM Work in an RIA (Rich Internet Application) - “Budget for the additional work: You will need to display the content in two different formats, one for search engines and one for your users (of course, without cloaking). Based on how much of the content is in RIA and needs to be indexed, the incremental could be anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of your original budget/effort. Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate: Creative departments and agencies can create great engaging experiences but if SEM goals are not embedded from the start of the project and the site is not coded in a structured format, then you will have issues with SEM.”
• On the Rebound - AKA: The Jump Ship Syndrome of Search Marketing Professionals: “Soul searching is a common theme for SEM rebound survivors. Anne stresses ‘you have to know what gets you excited about this business and motivates you to do good work.’ I think we’re seeing big paychecks being offered, but the offering companies are not providing a role or work environment that keeps the employee motivated. ‘One must like what he does. If the job causes lost sleep, loathing Mondays and ethical compromise then the money cannot offset that.’” Truer words…. See also: SEM industry staffing data

The I Also Glanced Over Reading list:

• The ROI on PPC vs. Affiliate Marketing - (via Biz Report) “If companies invest sufficient time and effort to develop strong affiliate programs, can affiliates deliver a better ROI than PPC advertising? Please note that the purpose of this brief is not to encourage marketers to abandon their PPC advertising in favor of affiliate marketing. Instead we are suggesting that a strong affiliate program can deliver additional revenues with a very favorable ROI.”
• More auto dealers embrace natural and paid search- “Currently 75% of auto dealers use search engine optimization, J.D. Power and Associates says. While only 33% of dealers currently use paid search engine marketing, more than 80% of those dealers say they believe that it improves web site visitation, as it takes vehicle shoppers directly to the dealer web site as opposed to shopping through an online buying service.”
• B-to-B Blogging — Prelaunch Checklist and How to Build Interest. See also: Companies wake up to blogs’ barking (via Modern Marketing )
• Are You Listening? See also: The Social Bookmarking Faceoff

BTW: Make sure to check out Logic + Emotion’s Working Class Blogger Diagram. If it’s possible to fall in love with a blog, I think I’ve fallen in love with this one. Sorry Three Minds, I have a new love.

The Too Cool: Real Simple Furniture. The first week I moved to San Francisco, I bought a table from IKEA and I have literally rearranged it 3 times… ie: rearranged the IKEA box and the tools necessary to put it together… but I have yet to put it together. Finally ready assemble furniture that is actually ready to assemble. (via Springwise) “Real Simple Furniture lives up to its name: their flat-pack furniture can be assembled and disassembled with absolutely no tools, other than a pair of hands. The pieces simply click together using lips and grooves.”

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

This past week the company I work for threw an excellent educational event called Interplay. The great thing about the event, is that staffers got to share some of the knowledge in our respective specialties (I discussed SEO and Social Media) with a small group of Brand Marketers. I especially loved the sessions on Usability which introduced me to Flex (of course the SEO in me was like, “Is that Search Engine Friendly?”).

What I enjoyed the most though, was getting to “nerd out” about some of my areas of interest with the attendees. Such as the discussion I had with an interaction designer from Apple who helped me to better understand Interaction Design (A topic I became interested in after coming across the term on a Blog I have fallen in love with: Logic + Emotion), discussing the power of Blogs in an online marketing strategy with a marketer from QLogic, getting to discuss all thing SEO with an online marketer from Micron (finally, I have met someone who agrees that the circus around Matt Cutts’ Blog is ridiculous. Did we really need so many posts about his vacation, people? It is really creepy how much we have in common.), having a web strategy specialist from Broadcom, explain the power of China in the future of the internet to me, and getting to see the cool things that Surfline is doing with Google Earth (finally some practical usage for Google Earth), as well as speaking about brand opportunities in Second Life. But the best part of all, was watching and singing along to Journey songs on a bus while vineyard hopping. I wish we had a video of that one - lol!

Below, you will find a list of some of the topics I discussed in my presentation:

• The role of Blogs and RSS on technology purchasing decisions
• Wikipedia Dominates Brand Search Results
• Does MySpace Have Any Link Juice Power?
• Harvard Business Review on Avatar-based Marketing
• Ford Bold Moves Blog
• Purina Pet Feeds

And FYI – I have decided to take CalTrain, so I will finally get a chance to update this blog on a regular basis. Spending two hours in traffic a day sure took the blogging spirit out of me. Please expect a full blog post this evening.

“Working hard to get my fill, everybody wants a thrill“ Don’t Stop Believin’ - Journey

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson