Search Engine Marketing: Using Google AdWords As A Research Tool

Marketing, Search Engine Marketing /

Please enjoy the following guest post written by my friends at Top Side Media.

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In our experience with search engine advertising, one of its unique aspects is that, in addition to directly generating online sales or leads, its robust settings provide an excellent tool for business research and planning. In the creation and management of search engine ads, the campaigns, ad groups, and more granular settings gather a great deal of useful data. This is particularly true for Google AdWords. When specifically set up for testing, the potential is a marketer’s dream. For example, we control the following primary variables:

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Twitter URL Shortener: Good Response to Phishing

Information Security, Security, Social Media /

The news sort of came out a bit under the radar, but Twitter announced a very interesting change they are implementing on their blog (March 9, 2010). Positioned as a response to phishing, they will be changing URLs in Direct Messages to their own twt.tl shortened redirects. Essentially, they can then track for bad behavior and block the URL altogether if the target web page is found to be malicious.

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Information Security & the New Generational Gap

Information Security, Security, Social Media /

Since the RSA Conference is happening this week, I thought it would be different to do a piece that hits on both Real-time and Information Security. The following blog post is my own original work that appeared on The Network View, the official blog for Anue Systems, on November 12, 2009. It highlights some important sociological differences between the various generations of today’s adult population, and looks at how changing work habits and security need to find a workable balance.

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Fantasy Sports: Social Networking or Time-Wasting?

Social Media /

Most of you likely looked at the title of this post and wondered, “Tommy, what the heck are you talking about? Fantasy Sports is not social networking.”

On the surface, it’s easy to see why the game could be viewed that way. But I’m here to tell you that fantasy sports are as much a vehicle for social networking as Facebook, Flickr, and even foursquare / gowalla.

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Social Media: It CAN be measured too!

Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media /

If you keep up with the local Austin startup scene or even with new social media services as they pop up, then surely you saw the announcement from Spredfast about their Social Media Campaign Management Dashboard product. It would easy to dismiss this as just another hype-laden announcement about a new social media tool, but that would be rather short-sighted in this case.

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Social Media for B2B: It CAN be done

Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Small Business, Social Media /

This week, Return On Now has the privilege of sharing with you a guest post by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered Inc. right here in Austin, TX. In addition to running marketing, he also serves as a key “social voice” for the company. In that capacity, Aaron continues with his speaking, blogging, podcasting, and social networking activities with an eye toward creating awareness and lead generation for the company. Aaron co-hosts the Quick-n-Dirty weekly podcast with Jennifer Leggio, he maintains a social media blog titled Citizen Marketer 2.1, and he is well-known as a thought leader in online and social media marketing.

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Small Business Social Funding: Preneuraholics.com

Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Social Media /

I recently learned of a cool new website via my ongoing social networking, and I was impressed enough with the idea to share with you here on Return On Now.

For those of you who interact with me on Twitter, surely you’ve seen the materials I’ve been sharing regarding the difficulty of getting your hands on financing or investment capital for your small business ventures. Credit markets have been squeezed to a pulp, it has been challenging to figure out how decisions are being made at the SBA, and angel investors and venture firms are being more cautious than we’ve seen in years when doling out funds. What’s an entrepreneur to do?

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Public Relations: 7 Steps to Selecting a PR Vendor

Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Public Relations /

Public Relations (PR) is one of the best ways to get some quick and potentially extensive exposure. But PR is much more than just crafting press releases and paying to post them to the business wire. Unless you are a larger company that can afford to keep dedicated PR resources in-house, you can do it yourself or bring in a PR vendor to manage it for you.

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