It is not often I jump on our blog and tell people to read another blog but this is a worthwhile exception! Ekatarina Walter, a social media strategist at Intel, wrote an article for Mashable (an amazing blog if you don’t know of it already) discussing the top 10 tips for posting on your Brand’s Facebook page. If you have any interest in using Facebook for your company or you are using it but you feel a bit in the dark (most of us do) then you really need to read this! The 10 Tips for Posting on Your Brand’s Facebook Page

On a side note, I don’t post links on the blog like this very often but I do share great articles I find online all of the time using my StumbleUpon account (a WIDE range of articles) and my Twitter account (@RossDunn) where I link to more web marketing related content.

Every day simpletons who think they are very clever visit our web site marketing blog and post completely useless, and often amusing comments. Their goal is to get links back to their website (or their clients) by making the post look personalized and legitimate. Sadly, they are almost always painfully daft, nonsensical, grammatically retarded posts. What is even worse is if they had half a clue they would have discovered our blog comment area blocks all outgoing links; thus they are wasting their time to start with. Anyway, over the past year I thought it would be fun to collect some of the best postings before I nuked them from our database and here is a selection of the 10 best.

WARNING: Reading this article may cause impairment of mental ability!

StepForth’s “Top 10 Most Rediculous Spam Comments Received” may be associated with fatigue, dizziness, lightheadedness, fainting or blurred vision. Please exercise caution or avoid operating machinery, including automobiles, following the visual digestion of this article.
>> Minor List of Side Effects

# 1. I wish I remembered which article this was sourced from. Whatever it was, it clearly had relevance.

“Blog looks really good mate, keep it up! I keep shedding the pounds thanks to information like this and my studies on resveratrol.”

Read more…

I got your attention with that title didn’t I!? No, it isn’t actually a book I wrote… I wish! That said, it is a great book I just bought from Marketing Sherpa and I am really looking forward to reading it.

Although I have been practicing web marketing for 14 years I have absolutely no illusions that I know everything (far from it). As a result, I read content from my web marketing peers as often as I can and I try to pick up Marketing Sherpa handbooks and guides occasionally to see what marketing strategies I may be missing; Marketing Sherpa truly rocks!

It is on that note I thought I would share this great deal on the 2011 B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook by Marketing Sherpa (a mouthful indeed!). The book will be released on March 1st but it is available right now for preorder at a significant $100 discount (down to $247 in digital format) which I couldn’t ignore. So, if you are like me and like to keep up on the best of the best techniques check it out!

Full disclosure: I am trying to cut my costs even more by advertising this with my affiliate code but can you blame me!?

Keep in mind they guarantee your satisfaction for this purchase 100% and I can’t imagine you not being happy with it – I have never returned one!

Here is what the 2011 B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook by Marketing Sherpa includes: Read more…

If you have any connection to the online marketing space then you know MySpace has been on the way out for a couple of years now. Well, apparently the situation is far worse than popularly known! The following graphic is from the Silicon Alley Insider shows how the once mighty Facebook competitor has crumbled:

The Rise and Fall of MySpace in the News

Here is a list of articles depicting MySpace’s rise as the sweetheart of social media to where it is now; it actually starts in 2003 but I thought some peeks at the former MySpace occupants starting in 1997 would be good for a smile or two. I have to say this social property has sure had its ups and downs!

1997 (yes, really!)

January 17th, 2007: Courtesy of Web.Archive.org, here is possibly the original owner of MySpace.com… sexy site!!

2000

May 10th, 2000: The online storage company, MySpace.com

2001

June 7th, 2001: “In Web Storage World, No Space at Myspace”

ON Sunday at 8 p.m., Myspace .com disappeared. Typing in its Web address yields only an error message.

Since more and more commercial Web sites have the life span of fruit flies, that would not usually be news. But when Myspace.com, an online storage locker, bolted its virtual doors, it also deleted an untold number of files stashed there free by its registered users, which the company says numbered 7.5 million as of last week. (read on)

2003

August 31, 2003: The MySpace phenomenon began… this is the earliest image of the MySpace launch.

2005

July 19th, 2005: “News Corp.’s Place in MySpace”

In less than two years, MySpace has emerged as one of the hottest sites on the Web. It has more page views than Google (GOOG ). And with 22 million members, and a growth rate of 2 million a month, it stands to rival MSN (MSFT ), Yahoo! (YHOO ) and AOL (TWX ) as one of the major destinations on the Web.

Read more…

Tonight join StepForth’s CEO and SEO Specialist, Ross Dunn as he discusses the best ways to merge social media with search engine optimization for best effect. Ross is only one of the speakers – read on for the official advertisement for this event to raise money for the BC Cancer Foundation.

7-9 pm, February 22nd – purchase tickets here.

How much would it be worth to you or your business if you could be known as “the best” in your industry?

Everyone has something that they are “the best” at and with Social Media it’s easier than ever before to Read more…

If you are at all involved in web marketing or follow a single online technology source then you have heard a million comments and discussions about the sting Google used to prove Bing is copying some of its search results: here is the original press release from Google with their evidence. (Just here to vote? Vote here)

The following quote summarizes the Google opinion on how Microsoft did it and the result:

As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of:

• Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature
• the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program

or possibly some other means to send data to Bing on what people search for on Google and the Google search results they click. Those results from Google are then more likely to show up on Bing. Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation.

What came of this very public wedgy from Google was, inevitably, a shit storm of enjoyable proportions between the two competitors. Here are some of the highlights along with some of my own thoughts on the matter:

Bing denies the copying allegations:

We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.

We do look at anonymous click stream data as one of more than a thousand inputs into our ranking algorithm. We learn from our customers as they traverse the web, a common practice in helping to improve a wide array of online services. We have been clear about this for a couple of years (see Directions on Microsoft report, June 15, 2009).

Not only does Bing deny the allegations but Google’s hypocritical stance allows Bing’s Yusef  Mehdi (SVP of Online Services) to take a righteous stab at Google and draw blood: Read more…

Do you want to learn how to do SEO yourself? For the second time I am teaching an eighteen hour, 6 night course at Camosun College on SEO over the month of February and I need just one more signup for this course to proceed.

The cut-off for signups is 12 noon tomorrow! (Jan 27th.)

Too Late or Can’t Make It?: if you find this after the cut-off date please contact me and I will put you on a list to let you know when the next course comes up.

More information on the course follows: Read more…

Google’s Matt Cutts recently announced enhancements to its spam reduction methods that have already taken place and are impacting search engine results.

NOTE: First I will recount some of what he said but if you want to get to the meat of it all skip below to “So What Does this Mean for Your Website?”.

And now, without further adieu let us start with a snapshot on the gravy Matt Cutt’s dished:

… we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments.

This is great news for many of us but there is a wide swath of decent businesses with legitimate products and services who have top rankings partly due to overly optimized content; in many cases they were forced to use the techniques competitors were winning with. It is these businesses that could feel the wrath of this update along with the additional updates to come in 2011 according to Matt Cutts: Read more…

Just 31 minutes ago Google CEO Eric Schmidt posted that he will be stepping down as CEO on April 4th, 2011 in favour of giving Larry Page the reins. This news came in conjunction with positive fourth quarter 2010 financial results released at the same time: “Google reported revenues of $8.44 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, representing a 26% increase over fourth quarter 2009 revenues of $6.67 billion” (4th quarter results).

Here is the pertinent quote from his news release:

Larry will now lead product development and technology strategy, his greatest strengths, and starting from April 4 he will take charge of our day-to-day operations as Google’s Chief Executive Officer. In this new role I know he will merge Google’s technology and business vision brilliantly. I am enormously proud of my last decade as CEO, and I am certain that the next 10 years under Larry will be even better! Larry, in my clear opinion, is ready to lead.

Read more…

Anyone who has seen one of my presentations knows that I am a die-hard MindJet Mindmanager user… in fact, I favour it over PowerPoint by far.

Some of my audiences have even requested more information on the product I use. Well, today, something special showed up in my mailbox… a 25% discount on all purchases at MindJet from November 29th to December 3rd, 2010. I immediately used the discount to upgrade from Mindmanager 8 to version 9

Click here for the discount: http://bit.ly/mindjetm