Social Media

Or, if you’re a Republican: “What the hell just happened?!” The election was supposed to be close. Regardless of your party affiliation, you heard that for months: Maybe an electoral tie. Certainly with one candidate winning the electoral college and the other the popular vote. We wouldn’t know for days after November 6th… Oops. The… Read More

Random

AKA: ‘Because I said so’ doesn’t work This is a really long post. But before you TL;DR it, give it a quick skim. The first half is hand-waving stuff about answering ‘Why?’ The second half is specific tips on doing proposals that build imputed value. Writing a great proposal is hard. The question you’re trying… Read More

Once again we’re in make-or-break Q4—the time of year businesses worldwide prep (and hope) for a flood of holiday business. The time of year that can determine the difference between a going concern and concern whether you can keep going. Be it crafting a quality, attention-grabbing email campaign or optimizing a mobile marketing strategy, this… Read More

SEO

For the first time in what might be ever, Google has followed Bing’s lead and announced a tool to disavow links. We asked (or demanded), and they listened! Cleverly named the Disavow Links tool, Google Webmaster Tools’ latest feature gives power back to webmasters and takes it away from spammers. Here are our tips for… Read More

PPC

If you’ve followed my blog musings in the last year or so at Portent, you’ll know that I’m a bit of a dashboard nut. My Perfect Google Analytics Dashboard post took off in ways I never imagined. (Thanks guys!) But here’s the thing: I was lying to you all – or misleading you, anyway. There… Read More

Internet Marketing

This post is part of a series on social media, Facebook data and the 2012 Presidential election. It updates Portent’s initial research. You can read the original report here. This year’s presidential race continues to be a great marketing study: The niche brand with a universe problem versus the hesitant big brand. After the debate… Read More

Social Media

For folks who wanted to see a video of my KOMO 4 Primetime appearance: You can’t even tell that, as the camera came on, I was whispering “don’t say um or like don’t say um or like don’t say um or like.” You can see our report on the topic in this blog post. And… Read More

Internet Marketing

I just finished reading the 2012 SEMPO/Econsultancy State of Search Marketing report. Lots of great data in there, but a few things leapt out at me. Some leapt out all smiles and happiness. Others leapt out and tried to bite out my spleen. Whenever I read a report like this, I ask myself three basic… Read More

PPC

Well OK, I’m being a tiny bit dramatic. But Google Shopping could totally and utterly screw you over if: You’re not a major brand with an AdWords rep to spoon feed you You’re not familiar with how shopping feeds, shopping engines & AdWords works You haven’t started thinking about this and you’re an ecommerce retailer… Read More

Social Media

Twitter rolled out a slew of changes today. The big conversation piece: The addition of profile “header” images. These images are just like Facebook and Google Plus headers. But on Twitter, the new header section also houses your all-important profile picture, name, handle, bio, location, and website. This update affects both Twitter’s web client and… Read More

Social Media

I’m ready to party like it’s 1999! The bubble is back. Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook may build a search engine. We all hyperventilate and swoon. Facebook shares go up 7.7% so fast the line chart breaks: Batten down the hatches, Google! The big bad Facebook has set its sights on you! Or not. Take a… Read More

Sean Bean dies in just about every movie and television show he’s in, but that doesn’t mean he’s dumb. And when it comes to paid search, Bean’s Boromir is absolutely right: becoming an expert at PPC takes time, experience, and some good intuition. But before one can master PPC, one must learn the basics. This… Read More

Social Media

I’m presenting my webinar about the Possibilities of Pinterest on Thursday, August 30, 2012 from 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM PDT. If this blog post reaches you in time, you can sign up for the webinar here. You can check out my slidedeck below. I’ll add a link to the recorded version of my presentation… Read More

PPC

Rick is the CEO and Co-Founder of CPC Strategy, a comparison shopping engine management company started in 2007. They take client feeds across multiple platforms (Amazon, Nextag, PriceGrabber, etc;) and optimize them for ROI through strategy, attention to detail and expertise in CSEs (comparison shopping engines.) Rick was kind enough to let me ask a… Read More

SEO

I’ve broken this out into lots of steps. You could do it all in one or two steps with a shell script or other geekery. I wrote this to keep each step simple, and get you into Excel as quickly as possible, instead. I’ve railed about fixing broken links for years now. I’ve presented webinars… Read More