This past evening Neon Rain Interactive was proud to support Alliance in Choice for Education (ACE) at a dinner event this past evening.

“ACE believes that every child – regardless of race, sex or family income – is of equal worth and is equally deserving of a quality education, and that providing every child with educational choice will promote an accountable and competitive education marketplace that fosters effective private and public schools.”

We heard from Former U.S. Congressman, the Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake and from students directly impacted by the scholarships provided through ACE.

We are grateful to have the ability to stand with supporters of Education to ensure that our country is prepared for the future.

Online video is becoming more and more prominent – mainly because it is getting much easier to do.  The technical barriers are being dropped and people are willing to put themselves out there.

Here are a few pros of using video to promote your business:

1. Your potential clients get a feel for you, how you talk, how you explain things, and who you are.

Are you witty? Boring? Arrogant? Kind? It’s hard to tell unless they can see your body language and hear your voice.

2. A 30 second quickie video testimonial holds more weight.

Leave it to human emotion but a video holds more weight and creates more credibility than a typed out, stick it in the bottom right corner of your web site type of customer quote.  Warranted?  Probably not, does it work?  Yes.

3. A picture is worth a 1,000 words, so video is worth 1,000,000?

Transferring knowledge, information, and emotion is easier done with video than typing out 10 pages on your blog.  People don’t have a lot of time, get them what they need and let them move on – they won’t read 20 pages – Unless you are a wicked writer or unless you want to be a writer.  Then go for it, you do what you need to do and people will appreciate it. At least some will.

4. Video can go viral much quickly than audio or text.

Just look at the DC Shoes YouTube video – as of this post, it has 5,721,716 views in 2 months.  It’s not easy to go viral…companies plan for it and do their best to create the right environment, but then someone shoots a video of their bridal party dancing in and they get 21,803,071 views in 1 month.

5. It’s easy to do now. You’ll be shocked how easy it is!

With a Flip UltraHD Pocket Camcorder and even the new iMovie 09 you can quickly shoot, edit, and upload into YouTube or your blog or web site within minutes.

A Bonus: Make some dough off your show!

Now you can even monetize your web site video if you get a lot of eyeballs.  Google is already betting that you’ll create some videos that will be shared millions of times, so they are going to keep watch and share the revenue with you.  How about that….

I know there are more reasons out there – why else would you like to see more video on web sites?

A great article here on the OPEN American Express Blog by Duct Tape Marketing. Make a checklist for your Ad generation…When you are in the mix of it, sometimes we forget all the ingredients that go into making a good ad. After you’ve done it over and over again, you’ll remember all of the pieces but you wouldn’t start making a special family dish for the first time without a recipe would you? To get good results, follow the steps – over and over again.

The Never-Fail Recipe for Ads That Work Like Crazy >

So, I had a meeting with a business partner the other day and he came in talking about how great Bing is – Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine (they call it a decision engine).  He was raving about how you can type in a type of food and your zip code and see local results!  I thought to myself, “Doesn’t Google already do that?”

So, as he sat in my office, I opened up Firefox and went to www.bing.com and a new tab to www.google.com and a tab to www.yahoo.com - I figured, let’s give it a whirl!

In my search string, I typed in “pizza 80241″ where 80241 is a zip code nearby in beautiful Colorado where our Colorado Web Development company is located.

Here are my rather interesting findings – I was actually quite surprised in many ways:

Note: I only looked at anything that showed up above the fol.d  Just to be as fair as possible.

1. Google

Google actually had a good degree of variation based on smaller chains to larger chains and geographically dispersed.

All from Local Business Results – Google Local:
Capri Pizza, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, Papa Murphys, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Anthonys, Abos, and Capri.

Then on the organic results from the SERP:
2 links to pizza pages on yellowpages and 2 links to pizza on merchant circle.

Either way, I’m sure I could find something useful and tasty just in the local results up top with the map.

Note: Now what was odd is that the points on the map were quite varried, there were some really close (5 – 10 mins) and some far (20 – 30 minutes away) – but a good distribution none the less.

2. Yahoo!

This one I didn’t get…there were 3 results up top next to the local results with a map.  3…just 3.  And #3 was over 30 minutes away from this zip code.

Here are the Yahoo! Local results:
Anthony’s II, Boardwalk Cafe, and Carl’s Pizza.

Note: No Dominoes, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, or any of the big ones that I know are around that zip.

Organic results from the SERP:
Result #1 was to Yahoo Local, #2 to yellowpages, #3 to citysearch, and #4 to DexKnows.

This is very interesting, while Google linked directly to the web sites of the retail pizza locations – it could be the corporate site vs. the local shop – Yahoo! instead chose to link to several directories.  Good food for thought if you see what I see

3. Microsoft Bing

This one really cracked me up…the local results up top were actually pretty good.

In the Local listings at the top we had:
Capri, Abos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Pudge Bros, Anthonys.

Note: All good, all close, and a good mix of small chains and large chains. 8 listings in all showing.

But the key here is that all 8 were very close to the zip code entered!

So down below the local listings in the organic SERP…and I love this:

Capri Pizza, Autozone, Space Imaging, A Denver Directory, Yellow pages.

Did you catch #2 and #3??? Autozone and Space Imaging!

Okay, so that was the link title and the links went to yellowpages which did actually link to Autozone and Space imaging without any mention of pizza – oddly enough this decision engine gave some weight based on an ad that probably showed up on those pages…even though the pages were for Autozone, etc. If I were looking for something more important, like a Hospital and I got something like Autozone or a bakery pop up – I’d be pissed.

So, who won Round 1 of the Search Engine Faceoff?

Local listings at the top: I have to give it to Bing, the results were the most accurate and well rounded.

Organic results inline SERP: This one goes to Google, they linked to the actual web sites of the pizza places and showed me coupons, etc.

(Google: 1 Yahoo!: 0 Bing: 1)

Marketing time versus marking time

Are you twiddling your thumbs waiting for the current economic malaise to pass, or getting proactive about marketing your company?

While many small business owners maintain a love-hate relationship with marketing (they love it when it works, but they hate doing it), the Internet, new technology, and common sense have conspired to offer some ideas that can rev up your revenues.

Operating on the premise that people gravitate to other people they know and like, it’s now possible to get known and liked at the click of a mouse. At the same time, some tried and true “high touch, low tech” avenues can complement technology-centric efforts to create a well-rounded marketing program.

Following are five ways to gear up your marketing efforts:

1. Go back to school. Promote yourself to your alma mater, both through its communications vehicles and one-on-one to alumni. There’s a bond that exists between people who attended the same college or high school—even if there’s never been a face-to-face meeting.

Research what communications vehicles the school uses to stay in touch with alumni. For example, the University of Denver publishes a quarterly magazine that addresses topics of current general interest and details the comings-and-goings of alumni.

Research the editorial calendar of such a publication; it may be possible to get featured in an upcoming article. Minimally, send in information about current professional/personal status for inclusion in the alum section.

Also reach out to individuals. Contact those sparking your curiosity or interest who have been profiled/included in school publications. Or, use the Internet to locate alums, and email them about your product or service. (It may be a good idea to ask for their advice rather than conduct a blatant pitch—at least initially. See “Ask, don’t tell” below.)

2. Go on a date. Social networking via Facebook, Linked-In, MySpace, Youtube and other Internet-based sites is all the rage. Primary uses are sharing information, promoting ideas, products and services, and matchmaking—both professional and personal.

It’s easy enough to check out social networking sites. Just go to their URL and follow the registration directions. To get where you want to go, you may have to shell out some money, but it’s typically a small amount.

Think of these avenues as door-openers, and don’t pigeonhole yourself because of the site’s primary focus. For example, some people on a personal networking site are simultaneously pushing their professional credentials and abilities—obviously figuring that there may be a good business as well as personal match.

Given the relatively low barriers to entry, register for several social networking services and see what, if anything, comes back to you. If nothing else, it’s cheap research.

3. Present new ideas to old clients. First, list out both present and former clients. Then do some research on their industries, trends, and company specific track records. Use results to get creative and proactive with selling your products and services to them. One way to proceed is to think of problem/solution sets. Identify a major problem or challenge that a current or former client has, and offer a compelling solution featuring your company’s offerings.

For example, a software reseller with a shiny new supply chain management application can research past and present clients to determine how this tool can solve a vexing problem they may be having presently.

4. Ask, don’t tell—or sell. When prospecting, consider asking questions or enlisting advice in lieu of trying to sell somebody on something. For example, if you’re a manufacturer wanting to sell homebuilders on a novel invention for kitchens, canvass prospects to get their feedback about value, efficacy and the best way to proceed—versus an overly enthusiastic or hard-sell pitch.

5. Get personal. We’re all flooded with emails, direct mails and other distracting communiqués. Unless something speaks to us very personally, it’s likely to get ignored or tossed. Getting personal involves providing something of value to the recipient in a way that showcases that value.

If you really want to snag that prospect, don’t send a coffee mug with your company’s name on it. Send a good bottle of wine, a spicy salsa, a container of high-end chocolates with the name of their company and recipient, possibly a historical photo tied to their company, and even a short story. This all can be done en masse with variable data printing, a digital process that enables printing thousands of labels or other items with true personalization—affordably and quickly.

This type of item demonstrates class, caring and your ability to focus on the recipient—not yourself. In today’s ubiquitous selling environment, this type of low-key, high-impact sales pitch can pay many dividends.

By getting proactive and personal, small businesses can open up a variety of new marketing opportunities that take advantage both of high tech and high touch approaches.

###

MARK LUSKY is a principal of Lusky Enterprises, Inc., a marketing communications company.

When Google is the front door, the side door, the hidden key under the mat, the cash register, the finder of everything we ever lost, and everything we wished we’d lost, what comes next? When everyone is a newspaper, a magazine, a TV station, a radio station, a conference, a curator, an educator, a business owner, a shopkeeper, what do we have? When you and I are the creators, the consumers, and the collaborators of this media, what does this mean to us?Social media business strategy and more – chrisbrogan.com, Nov 2008

You should read the whole article.

Congratulations David Plouffe (Campaign Manager for Barack Obama’s Presidential Election Campaign)…

Your campaign was quite slick.  You utilized technology, you utilized manpower, you have created a new template for Presidential elections.  All future election campaigns will be held to a new standard and level of utilizing technology…long gone is the old way of campaigning.

Between the Obama Girl, Facebook ads, and an iPhone application, you took advantage of the Internet as a communication tool and you captured a generation and communicated with them at their level.  And yes, I know Obama Girl was not part of your campgain strategy, or was she?

People-Press.org provides the following statistics…

The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%).

Moreover, the internet has now become a leading source of campaign news for young people and the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story. Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source. In January 2004, just 20% of young people said they routinely got campaign news from the internet.

Once again, congratulations…see you on Facebook.

An added FYI – I just setup our Wordpress > Twitter plugin and it works great.  Easy too.  Took < 3 minutes.

You can see it work here:

http://twitter.com/arifgan

Social Networking can be a pain.  I mean, you have a blog, you have a twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other accounts.  There are tools out there to allow you to aggregate all of the data but what about syndication?

Well, that is the brilliance of RSS.  Here’s a quick video about RSS feeds and what they are:

Here are 2 tools that will help you tie your social networks together:

1. Wordpress just announced a LinkedIn plugin.  Now, you can link up your Wordpress blog to LinkedIn so anything you post on your Wordpress blog will automatically be syndicated to LinkedIn.

Here is a quick video:

There are also a few others tools out there to keep you connected.

2. Here is a tool for connecting Wordpress to twitter…as you post on your blog, this little plugin can automatically create a tinyurl and post it to your twitter feed. Which can then be broadcast via text messaging, etc.

Click here for a twitter plugin for wordpress with tinyurl API support.  It sounds tough to install, but it’s easy

Thanks to OpenSocial…Social Networks are merging together…but it’s also another way for Google to track you down.

Seriously, who actually buys products from an anonymous spam email?

Authorities Shut Down Spam Ring

The Federal Trade Commission won a preliminary legal victory against what it called one of the largest spam gangs on the Internet, persuading a federal court in Chicago on Tuesday to freeze the group’s assets and order the spam network to shut down.

The group, which used several names but was known among spam-fighting organizations as HerbalKing, sent billions of unsolicited messages to Internet users over the last 20 months, promoting replica watches and a variety of pharmaceuticals, including weight-loss drugs and herbal pills that supposedly enhanced the male anatomy, according to the commission.

“This is pretty major. At one point these guys delivered up to one-third of all spam,” said Richard Cox, chief information officer at SpamHaus, a nonprofit antispam research group.

The investigation provides a clear window into the business of modern spam, which by some estimates accounts for 90 percent of all e-mail sent over the Internet.

To pepper Internet users with its solicitations, the HerbalKing group used a botnet, a global network of computers infected with malicious software, often without the knowledge of their owners.

The security firm Marshal Software, which assisted the F.T.C. with the investigation, estimated in court documents that the group’s Mega-D botnet — named after one of its pill products — was made up of 35,000 computers and could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. In January, the botnet was the leading source of spam on the Internet, the firm estimated.

F.T.C. investigators also said they monitored the group’s finances closely and that it cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone.

The commission has brought more than 100 cases against spammers and spyware vendors over the past decade. But officials and investigators said this spam operation was perhaps the most extensive they had ever encountered, with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States.

“They were sending extraordinary amounts of spam,” said Jon Leibowitz, an F.T.C. commissioner. “We are hoping at some level that this will help make a small dent in the amount of spam coming into consumers’ in-boxes.”

The commission asked the federal district court in Chicago to freeze the gang’s finances, arguing that its members were using unfair and deceptive advertising practices and violating the Can-Spam Act of 2003. That federal law provides civil and criminal penalties for spammers who falsify information in e-mail messages and fail to offer ways for consumers to refuse further messages.

The government is also pursuing criminal charges against the group. F.B.I. investigators in Chicago and St. Louis have executed search warrants against members of the spam gang, the commission said.

Jody Michael Smith, 29, of McKinney, Tex., was involved in the group’s finances, according to the F.T.C. Reached at his home, Mr. Smith said: “I don’t even know who these people are who I have been tied to,” and referred all inquiries to his Dallas lawyer, John R. Teakell. Mr. Teakell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

United States officials are also working with New Zealand authorities in the case against Lance Thomas Atkinson, 26, a native of New Zealand who now resides in Australia. Mr. Atkinson has a history in the spam business. In 2005, the F.T.C. obtained a $2.2 million judgment against him and a business partner for running a similar operation selling herbal pills online.

In conjunction with the investigation in the United States, the Department of Internal Affairs in New Zealand asked a court on Tuesday to impose a fine of 200,000 New Zealand dollars, or $121,000, on Mr. Atkinson, his brother Shane Atkinson and a business partner for violating the country’s own spam laws.

The activities of the HerbalKing group, like those of other criminal groups online, were remarkably international in scope. The group was shipping drugs like Propecia, Lipitor, Celebrex and Zoloft out of India. The F.T.C. also said the group based its Web sites in China, processed credit cards from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and Cyprus, and transferred funds among members using ePassporte, an electronic money network.

As part of its investigation, the commission purchased the “herbal” pills from the group and asked the Food and Drug Administration to test them. That agency found that the pills contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, which can be risky for some people with heart conditions.

Antispam researchers lauded the crackdown and said it would send a strong message to other spammers. But they were not confident that spam volumes would decrease.

“This will send some real shock waves through the spamming industry, but even if these guys were running a substantial botnet of compromised computers, there are always spammers looking to take their place,” said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a spam-fighting security firm. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”