Jason Calanis, the head of Weblogs blog network (acquired by Netscape), sets out his vision of the corporate blog's role and importance to a business. In his inimitable style:

If you are in the Internet industry and you don't have time to blog about your product then you should quit. Go home, give up, and find another career. Your competitors are blogging about their products and talking to the market, and there is no way to compete if you don't engage the discussion. So, by not blogging you basically are giving up and telling the market that you don't care. That's the honest truth.

Blog or die!

You can't compete in the web-development space without a blog any more. Period, end of story.

[Blog or die. - The Jason Calacanis Weblog]

Not much room for subtlety in Mr. Calacanis' view. A more conservative company policy, which will probably reach mainstream companies in the next few years, is the importance of the corporate blog in a companies Public and Client Relationships.

On a most basic level, with more press release agencies going online, a blog is a good landing page for Press Releases. Two popular online press release agencies are:

• Webwire: The First Internet Press Release Distribution Resource
• PRWeb: The Original Press Release Marketing Company

Second, is the importance of giving the company a human face. Specially, if you have a strong corporate brand name, having an emotive fuzzy image can go a long way to generating a positive response. More and more important is also a companies interaction with its community of clients.

Unfortunately, a blog is not the be all and end all. May be necessary but not sufficient. A blog by itself will not generate a strong brand; you have to do that by other means. More and more brands are created through exceptional products and services.

Technorati Tags: jason+calacanis

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 4:21 PM | Permalink: Role of Corporate Blogging: Blog or Die | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first step in controlling an outcome is to measure it. You cannot control what you do not measure. How do you measure your search engine optimisation? By picking a list of keywords and looking at their ranking on Google for each keyword search.

After you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. Then the upward climb reaches a best position. Once you stabelize, you will see the Google Dance, in which your position moves up and down by 5 to 10 positions in a continuous manner. Google Dance is to be endured and ignored as far as possible.

What is important is the long-term trends of search engines positions. The way in which search engines rank websites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking - your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings.

Enclick Aggregate Google Ranking Value

The measure used by Enclick, in our search engine optimisation service is to set up a weighted value of your rankings on Google. Just one number. Like the net-value of your stock exchange holdings as you the financial markets go up and down. This is particularly important when you have hundreds of keywords in play, when you are pursuing the long tail of keywords, as with client's using our seach engine friendly product data services, which gets a catalogue of products into shopping engines.

First, the keyword analysis must generate a long list of keywords in categories then assign an importance value, a weighting value from 1 to 10, to the category and then to the top 10 keywords in each category.

Google's famous ranking algorithm is subject to continuous improvement, and also deliberate modifications. The slight changes in algorithm weightings are meant to throw and confuse the web spammers, who profit from ranking SPAM pages on Google. The key is to monitor your positioning for signficant long term trends, ignoring Google Dance slight up and down movements. And when aiming at the long tail of keywords a single unified value of your Google Ranking Value becomes very important.

Since rankings are competitive; one step ahead of the competition is enough. Your competitive analysis must give your major competitor's standings and the keywords and categories they populate. Enclick provides the Aggregate Ranking Value of your competition.

Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor\s position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Your search engine presence is an investment. It is your online brand asset which has value to your business, and needs continuous management to maintain and exploit. The target is generating a good Return on Investment from your marketing budget. The advantage is that for online investment, you can measure how well your Search marketing Budget turns into Sales. The Aggregate SEO Ranking Value, in our Enclick SEO service, provides a way of measuring your online brand presence in a meaningful quantifiable value.

Technorati Tags: Google+ranking , long+tail , search+engine+optimisation , SEO

Posted by Paul Salber at 10:11 AM | Permalink: Measuring your Search Engine Optimisation Performance | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

For decades, Lord Saatchi has been an icon of the advertising and marketing industry in the UK. The company he co-founded with his brother, Saatchi & Saatchi, is notorious for managing the conservative government comeback in the 80s and 90s. Baron Maurice weighs in on the death of the TV-industrial complex with insightful tips for brand owners:

• TV Advertisign at its worst will be killed off by the internet

With the fragmentation of media, TV adverts are no longer having any impact, only the efficient, the brutally concentrated thought will survive.

• Only the most brutally simple ideas will be survive in the complexity and confusion of the digital marketplace.
Its the modern equivalent of having the best site on the high street, except the location is in the mind.
• Precision is better than greed The strongest brands are defined by their ownership of one thought; it is best to be unique and precise in owning one word than overlapping in concept with others through greed.


• Favorite word: Simplicity


• the new generation of digital consumer multi-tasks and has a brain programmed to edit ruthlessly
Biggest marketing problem in the 21st century, people's protective filtering from media intrusion; Malcom Gladwell's "Blink", Seth Godin's "All marketers are liars".

• Media fragmentation can be navigated by Unifying your Brand Concept and Meaning. It doesnt matter what the medium is that carries the message.

Advertising agencies struggling with ever fragmenting media and demographics can use the "One Word" Simplified-Brand as a Unifying concept which clarifies, redefines and re-unites their target audience again. Demographics is about meaning, a Word, a Concept and less about channels and age-groups.

Reminds me of the Daniel Pink's "The Concept Age"

• Broadcast advertising will remain a dominant feature of the overall advertising landscape provided

Simplicity will save TV advertising. Strong simple concept will punch trough the media noise and save TV advertising.

Mmmm....not sure about this one.

Maurice's "one-word" branding and strategy has similarities with Seth Godin's uniqueness, "subsubsegmenting" and nicheing thesis. Lord Maurice is a little unclear on the mechanics and detail of how to segment the demographics. But he states that select the word and meaning right, and segmentation takes care of itself,

For an old dynasour of the TV-industrial complex, with an estimated $600m made from TV advertising and marketing, he is not resting on his laurels. Seth Godin should make him an emeritus member of his fabled Big-Moo-33 for evolving above and beyond any need to.

Technorati Tags: advertising , branding

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 11:04 AM | Permalink: Branding in the New Digital Age - Saatchi & Saatchi Style | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)