I recently had a conversation with two programmers from Microsoft. We began discussing their search division and how far behind they were to rivals Google and Yahoo. Instead of playing catch up to Google and Yahoo’s search they should be focusing their efforts and leading the way in Blog Search.

With traditional media missing consumers entirely, more and more advertisers look online to distribute their content. Unfortunately, a big percentage of company’s out there still have the CMO in charge who still believes that consumers are sitting by the TV, and or radio eagerly awaiting advertisements. You can place Google in with traditionally media here since many search results on Google return garbage.

Consumers are beginning to take control and the blogosphere is allowing them to do so.

Today, consumers have the control over what information they decide to put in front of them. Google and Yahoo’s organic search results are continuing to become less relevant to consumers searches. Most Retail Searches on Google will yield results for companies like Bizrate.com, shopping.Yahoo.com, nextag.com etc. in it’s organic results. If consumers want to shop at those websites there they will. They don’t choose Google to find retail aggregators. Consumers have already begun to turn their backs on traditional search engines due to their lack of relevant results. If Microsoft is smart, they will see this to their advantage and beef up their Blog Search division.
Consumers have created their own information-gated community called the blogosphere. At the present time, there is an open market for a really good Blog Search Engine. One that will enable advertisers and consumers to reach each other without so many middle men taking advantage of both sides.

Blogs are becoming a powerful B2B presence.  In a study done by Knowledgestorm, blogs are becoming even more critical for any website business. In the study, 53% of the respondants claim that content from blogs has an impact on a buying decision.  80% read blogs and 51% read blogs once a week.  More…….

Instant update, instant viewing and Instant Retail Gratification all in one shot…. Retail RSS Marketing we always knew it would be big. Now its getting even bigger.
Just saw a blurb about Microsoft’s New Feed Reader Codename Microsoft Max…All I can think of is all retailer’s products that subscribers are interested in, being updated as soon as they are posted on a Retail Blog… sounds powerful…

I will be installing this later and will have more feed back on this product.

“Every one of Pontiac’s marketing dollars to introduce its sporty G5 coupe is being spent online”

Do you have a car dealership? Used Cars, New Cars, Buy Here Pay, Large and Small. The Time is now to jump into blog marketing. Pontiac apparently is begginning to understand the potential for an advertising campaign online with their campaign for the G5. As a car dealer you may not have the weight (money) to throw around but you do have everything you need to let us help you with an online blog marketing campaign.

As encouraging as it is to see Pontiac embracing online advertising I don’t have a problem throwing out that for a fraction of what they are spending we could run a much more effective retail blog marketing campaign.

Think you can’t compete with the big companies? Think again.

Move over myspace, there’s a new sheriff in town and it goes by the name of MUGSHOT.  What is Mugshot? Mugshot is an open project to create a live social experience around entertainment…Mugshot makes it easy to share web pages and show off your music tastes. You can learn about Mugshot feautures as we introduce them on our Mugshot Features page.

How well will they do?   If it’s anything like Linux, they’ll do very well.  It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next 12 months.  Stay tuned….

There is a tendancy when formulating your retail marketing plan to focus on short rather than long term goals. If you use paid search you will certainly get immediate traffic. You give Google $1,000 today and you get traffic. The unfortunate thing about this form of advertising is that once you stop paying Yahoo or Google, your traffic is gone. It is just not a good recipe for long term success.

The strategy we recommend is to use paid sesarch advertising today, and build up natural search traffic for tomorrow. It’s not a new concept, but blogs help to narrow the gap. Our blog marketing campaigns work extremely quickly, enabling companies to back off their spend a lot sooner than expected. So not only does our company ensure your long term success, we also save your marketing budget for more useful and productive initiatives than pay per click.

One of the mistakes that people make when they are formulating their retail marketing plans and looking at search engines, is that they try and target the big keywords in their industry. A good example would be an online retailer who sells running shoes. The term “shoes” will get the most traffic, but that would not be a good term to target. It would take forever to get ranked and that term would not convert well into sales. “Running shoes” would be better. It will rank quicker and convert better. “New Balance Running Shoes” would be better still. Your conversion on a term like that will be high, and you are still building relevancy for the terms “running shoes” and “shoes”.
The same principals apply to blog marketing. Contact us and our team will help you with your marketing strategies and make sure that you are getting the most out of your retail blog marketing program.

Big Corporate Companies are Investing in Retail Blog Marketing.

• Paramount
• Johnson and Johnson
• Washington Post
• AOL Time Warner

I am sure there are more, these are just a few of the companies I remembered that recently invested in blog marketing. Small and Medium size businesses this is your opportunity to get a piece of the online sales pie that many larger companies are only just beginning to notice. Some larger companies are “testing” and “evaluating” … that is fine for them, they will come around to realize how effective blog marketing can be but if you are a small business more than likely you can make the decision without the red tape and hurdles that a larger company might have to go through.

That is an advantage you can use right now to start a retail blog marketing campaign. Get started early while the larger companies are “testing” and evaluating” . The Return is High and getting started early establishes your company in the blogosphere well ahead of any elephants in your industry.

One of the interesting things that we are starting to see with our retail blog clients is that their blogs are showing up on search engine results pages, many times alongside their main company website. This is the trend that is becoming more and more apparent every day. Blogs are going to be much more important than most companies’ websites in the future.
We have a real estate client in the happy position of having four rankings on a major search engine for one keyword phrase; two rankings for his site, and two for his blog. His blog marketing campaign is helping him dominate his market.