Brand-Yourself.com Platform
Not sure how to market your services online? Brand-Yourself.com is here to help. The company uses a 4-step process to help folks promote themselves - and their services - online:
1. Build
2. Optimize
3. Promote
4. Monitor
Plus, the service features customized tools to help you track your progress through each step. Looks kind of cool!
While you’re at it, check out Jacob Share’s 50 tips for branding yourself online.
CNNMoney reported today that the Yahoo! share of online searches is sharply declining. The company’s search market share fell from 18% in October to 17.5% in November, according to the monthly comScore report.
The November figure is the lowest share ever recorded for Yahoo!
Bing, however, appears to be doing quite well; Miscrosoft’s newest search engine gained 0.4 points to cover 10.3% of online searches in November. Google is still the leading search engine, owning a solid 65.6% of the market, which is an increase of 0.9 point since July.
What the Microhoo?
With Microsoft’s Bing success, one wonders why Microsoft forged a 10-year deal with Yahoo! to combine search engine efforts. The joint venture, called Microhoo, was developed to combine the market shares of Yahoo! and Bing together to give the new Microhoo a 28% stake in online searches. Under the terms of the coupling, Yahoo! would be powered by Microsoft’s search engine. In exchange, Microsoft would give Yahoo! 88% of the revenue gained from searches on Yahoo! sites. (more…)
Ever have a burning desire to know what people are searching for online when you’re out and about away from your home computer? If so, then there’s good news for you: a new iPhone app is available to help you stay on top of real-time Web search stats while you’re on the go.
SearchTrends is a free iPhone app from Little Red Bike Media that shows real-time search trends for the top search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and yes, even Twitter.
Check out this mini review of SearchTrends by Tech Crunch’s Daniel Brusilovsky, which I came across while browsing one of my favorite futurist Web sites, Kirzweilai.net (highly recommended for folks like me who like to stay on top of scientific and technological developments and trends.
Web writer can use this tool (and others like it) to uncover some of the most popular and trendy search terms for, say, news articles that we publish online. Also, it’s helpful to keep an eye on what keywords and keyword phrases people are searching for to get insight into the specific words people use to communicate what they’re looking for with search engines.
And in case you were wondering how Google stays on top of search terms, check out this display at their Mountain View headquarters. I’d like one of these for my office, please!
One of the most important things for Web writers and online marketers to do is (shocker) TEST their email marketing campaigns. With the free tools that come along with today’s email marketing tools, there’s no excuse for not testing email marketing campaigns.
Folks running email marketing campaigns should know:
CNN.com published an article today that addressed the now-infamous Michelle Obama photo in which she has been Photoshopped to resemble an ape. According to the article, some experts believe that Google may have tweaked its algorithm after discovering that the offensive image climbed in search engine results.
“When [analgorithm] doesn’t do what they want it to do, they go back and start tweaking things,” said Danny Sullivan, a search-engine guru who runs Search Engine Land. “Long term, you look at how they got there. When you search for Michelle Obama, do you really think that kind of image is one of the most popular things about her on the Internet? I don’t think so.”
Google already has an automated tool that prevents Internet users from “Google Bombing” - or pulling together to force a specific result (ie: the epic “miserable failure” = George Bush episode of 2003 and the 2007 effort by Stephen Colbert fan to return Stephen Colbert’s bio when searchers Google “greatest living American.”). (more…)
Netvibes - a French technology company - has released Wasabi BETA. Wasabi is a data feed aggregation that looks pretty darn cool. It collects all of a user’s newsfeeds from various social networking and news sites into a customized dashboard that is easy to read.
According to the Wasabi Web site, the tool offers 3 main features:
1. The best of both worlds - a personalized dashboard and the world’s fastest reader.
2. Instant, near real-time, updates.
3. A mosaic view. This is not your standard newsfeed ticker tape.
Check it out! For us Web and social networking people, Wasabi may very well change the way we’ll be communicating in not too long…Wasabi already has 20,000 BETA users. Netvibes - a similar tool - has 3.5 million users.
While stumbling around on the Net this evening, I came across this blog post from a year ago, which states that third parties need to pay the Associated Press in order to quote the AP. According to the post, “The Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words.”
Moreover, according to the blog, the AP encourages folks to “snitch” on writers who quote the AP without a license to do so by offering up to $1 million in reward money for tattlers. (more…)
All Web writers need to be sure that they review the Federal Trade Commission’s updated regulations regarding testimonials and endorsements. 
For the first time in nearly 3 decades, the FTC has updated its regulations to account for blogging and online advertising. The purpose of the updated regulations is to help ensure that consumers are not getting misleading or false information from social media sources that they may be more inclined to trust than traditional advertising sources.
These changes will take effect on December 1, 2009. Read about them here.
In short, the FTC regulations require that:
To be sure that they are being mindful of the new regulations, bloggers and Web writers should provide as many facts as possible to support their claims. (more…)
