Foxwood Online Marketing

My 100th Blog Post

This is my 100th blog post!  My first was released October 19, 2009.  I started out talking a lot about online marketing and technology but soon started dropping in some personal stories and almost always included some opinion.  I put them into 14 categories and listed them below with the most current listed first in each category.  There are links (underlined) to the ones I think are the best but you can go to the site and enter the title words in the search box just under my picture to find any of the 99 if you wish to read them.  Here goes.

 

Business (8)

How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Media Budgets

ROI Perspectives of Social Media

Online Advertising Forecast Up 11% in 2010

Should I Do A Blog or Newsletter?

The Business Model (This was an attempt at a video post; and not very good)

6 Great Reasons for a SMB to Follow Internet Marketing Industry News

How Web-Savy Are Seniors?

Losing Your Website Domain Name-A Near Disaster

 

 

Blogging (4) - About blogging

Mashable is 5 Years Old

6 Reasons Why Bloggers Are Moving to the Front at Fashion Show

The State of Blogosphere

Blog, Blog, Blog and Blog (my first)

 

 

Customer Service (5) - Issues that show good or bad customer service

Apple's iPhone 4 Problems

United Breaks Guitars (View the video, it's hilarious and a catchy tune)

My Take on the iPad

Comcast Is Listening But Not Answering

HP's Racist Computer

 

 

Education (2) - Articles on the best and worst of what's happening in education

Higher Education:  How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids (If you have a kid facing college you need to check this out)

Mark Zuckerberg Gives $100M for Education in Newark

 

 

InfoGraphics/Videos (12) - The format delivers a huge amount of information in an entertaining style.  The Twitter one was one of the first I noticed and best.

Is Social Media Ruining Students?

The Best of April Fools Day 2011

The Value of Being LinkedIn

January 28th was Data Privacy Day

Update on Groupon

Top 25 Most Viewed Videos On YouTube as of July 31, 2010

The Latest InfoGraphics and Video on the Interenet & Social Media

Incredible video on Internet Statistics

Online Metrics

If You Printed Twitter 

 

 

Music (5) - I do live in Nashville after all so it was inevitable.  The Indie Music post details the new go-to-market model for music.

4 Conclusions on the Impact of Digital Natives on Music

What if Napster Had Never Been Invented?

Nashville is the Silicon Valley of the Music Business

Indie Music and Online Marketing

A Possible Nashville Success Story for MusikPitch (this guy has become my friend)

 

 

Marketing (11) -  I claim Marketing Technologist as my title and The Wow Factor video has a research-based formula that's very interesting and can help anyone.

 New Job Title - Marketing Technologist

 My Take on QR Codes ( I think this is some my best interpretation of market opportunities)

 2 Business Lessons I Learned from the Grassland Community

 Online Marketing Delivers Cost-Effective and Measurable Results

 Will Groupon Become the Next Hot Social Media? (This was from January of 2010)

 Pepsi Breaks 23 Year Super Bowl Streak to Invest in Online Community

 Permission Marketing (This is about the Seth Godin book)

 The Wow Factor (This is really unique)

 B2B Marketers Will Increase Online Marketing Spending in 2010

 Enhance Your Marketing Resume

 Online Marketing VS Visitors Bureau

 

 

Opinion (13) - Let me know if you think my tornado strategy makes sense or I am crazy.

 Tornadoes VS Hurricanes VS Software Bugs:  A Comparison

Has Social Media Innovation Ended?  I Say No

Contribution Value Versus Feel-Good Value for Charities

Why Doesn't the US Government Do Something About WikiLeaks?

Why the Republicans Should Support Defense Cuts

What Can Be Learned from the Chilean Miner's Rescue

Net Neutrality - Blah, Blah, Blah

My Favorite Blogs

Super Bowl Thoughts (This is where I say Payton Manning will not be considered the best quarterback of all time)

Not My 2010 Prediction; My Request

Another Reason Why Google Will Kill Microsoft

The New Velocity of Life and Are We Competitive (one of the best technology videos I have ever seen)

10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010

 

 

Personal (6) -These really have nothing to do with business. 

Why I Love Country Music (this post has in my opinion one of the best music videos ever and I have seen all the Lady Gaga videos).

The Nashville Flood May 2010 (I think this is my best written post)

Lessons Learned on How to Deal with Car Repairs

My Visit to Asheville (Guys will appreciate this)

My Weekend in Stone Mountain

Thanksgiving (my 2nd best written post)

 

 

Religion (3) - In spite of my sending the last one to my priest, he still does not blog.

6 Social Media Tips for Churches

3 Things You Should Know About Islam (this video has resulted in roughly 50 hours of further study)

Pope Tells Priests to Blog

 

 

Sociology (7) - The Digital Natives concept is referenced more in other posts than any other.  I think you'll like the joke post.

Internet Usage Among Generations Has One Alarming Trend

Study Shows Reading Slower on iPad & Kindle but Satisfaction Higher

Privacy Discussed on Russian Television

Digital Natives (This made a significant impact on me)

4 Possible Positives of the Kaiser Study on Media Use by 8-18 Year-Olds

Study Reveals Brain's Different Reaction to Surfing Versus Searching

The World's Funniest Joke

 

 

Social Media (5) - About the business end of Social Media

New Social Media Value Chart for Marketing

How Web 2.0 Is Having A Positive Impact in Our Lives - A Perspective

How Is Social Media Use Affecting Our Lives?

Facebook Celebrates 500 Million Users

Despite the Recession, 94% of Enterprises Continue to Invest in Social Media

 

 

Technology (14) - My Sci-Fi theory of how the Jeopardy incident will be a milestone in the history of how machines conquer man.

New Tool helps Tone Down Emotion in Email

Man VS Machine on Jeopardy - A Milestone of Human Elimination (Having been a life=long fan of sciene fiction, I am proud of my sci-fi story line)

End of an Era, Kodachrome Film Is No More (this post is historic even if I do say myself)

Survey Results on Cell Phone Service & Some Tips

Web 2.0 Summit

Prop 19 (California Marijuana) Would Have Passed on the Internet

Credit Card 2.0 Wins DEMO Award of $1M (if you are a techology buff you'll like this one)

Google Announces Realtime Search Ability

Experts Say We Will Be Working in the Cloud by 2020

Website VS Blog:  Which Is Better?

2 of the Top 5 Supercomputers in the World Are in Tennessee (as a Tennessean native, this was pretty cool to know our state has a claim to a high-tech benchmark)

Google Search Tips Video

Google CEO at Gartner IT Expo

Google Search Tips

 

 

Social Media for Kids (4) -There are lots of sites that have security as opposed to Facebook

Social Media Monitoring for Parents

The Case for Social Media in Schools

Update on Facebook Security Concerns

Nashville Area Parents Create Safe Social Media Site for Their Kids (This resulted in a relationship with the developers of this applications)

 

 

So at this occasion after 99 posts, what have I learned?  I have learned how to take a concept and search the internet for supporting documentation and images.  I have learned to take data or opinion of some sort and add my perspective and interpretation to the data.  I have found that while having to face the inevitable deadline that rather than dread it, I look forward to it as a challenge.  I have taken an infographic for example and converted it into a viable post even though frankly I started out to 'phone it in' that day.  But most of all I have found in writing a blog that is both an outlet to express opinions AND a mechanism to offset the effects of multi-tasking which most of us have internalized as a way of life.  So I will continue to blog even though the subjects may change.  Because I like it... 

 

 

 

Google Announces Realtime Search Ability

I saw a couple of blog posts about Google's realtime search ability and decided to check it out.  This week they released a 2:21 video announcing a website for realtime search and some tips on how to use it.  The video features a Product Manager and Software Engineer, the folks who know the application best.  The problem with the video though is it goes so fast it is difficult to catch all the instructions on how to use the features.  I think this is by design.  While it is another important step in realtime search, it was not quite ready for primetime in my opinion when I reviewed it.  For example, when I went to the YouTube location for the video or copied the link for the new website location:  http://google.com/realtime, I got an error, the hateful 404 Not Found message.  A couple of days later, it worked.  I was able to find a landing page with a call-to-action button that revealed the following location: http://www.google.com/realtime?esrch=RealtimeLaunch::Experiment.  Note the term "Experiment" which explains much.    More review later; for now watch the video which can be found by clicking here.

After stopping, rewinding, and starting again I was able to take some notes to try it.  First if you do a regular Google search, on the left and at the top you can expand your search to media outside of websites which is the generic search criterion.  Clicking on "News", "Images", or "Videos" can increase your options for a search.  What I hadn't noticed before [or it wasn't there] is the option for "More".  This reveals "Books", "Blogs", "Updates", and "Discussions".  According to the video, the what's new part is "Updates".  For my test I entered the search term "Nashville Flood".  Up popped a page of results from Twitter and Facebook from as recent as 28 minutes ago.  The neat part of this is the option for time and locations.  Since the flood occurred in May I clicked on the "2010" link at the top of the search results and low-and-behold you can see when the most content was created; cool.  However when I tried the location feature, I could not get any search results until I went back to the "Now" option and then only when I inserted "Nashville, TN" did I get any success.  It did not return any results for "Nearby" or for my city of "Franklin, TN". The last thing new is the option at the bottom of the search results to set up an alert for a search term.  While I have established alerts for my brand and those of some clients, this is really easy.

I entered a new search term, "Ground Zero Mosque" and not surprising, there were lots of entries.  But if I were really interested in this topic I could have been emailed results: as-it-happens, daily, or once-per-week using the alerts feature.  I can think of several good applications for this feature.  Bringing up results from social media you get access to content created not only by the professionals but by the public as well.  So I can monitor what people say after the Tennessee Titans play a game, the latest on the Little League World Series, any political issue, the latest musings of any political personality (I tried Ann Coulter and Mayor Karl Dean), and even Nashville Weather when thunderstorms and tornados occur.  So in spite of the bugs in this offering, I am glad I checked it out and am confident that the geeks at Google will continue to refine this capability going forward.  Oh, and I will absolutely use it...

So try this out the next time you are doing a search and website results are not delivering what you had hoped for.  And stay tuned to Google as they continue to create new ways to provide you information with a few letters typed and a couple of mouse clicks.

Top 25 Most Viewed Videos On YouTube as of July 31, 2010

Frankly I couldn't think of a subject for my weekly blog.  I was thinking of showing off my favorite moon walking videos from YouTube when it hit me.  Why not list the most watched videos and see if there are any conclusions I can make from the list.

First, finding the most viewed videos wasn't that easy.  When you do a search on YouTube for 'most watched' or 'most viewed' the results are not the videos but the 'best' match which are summary or comment videos (like what I'm doing here but not in video format).  By the way did you know YouTube is the 2nd most used search engine?  I had seen in a blog post that Justin Bieber has the most watched video so I searched for that.  I discovered if you click on the downward double arrow next to the number of views, You get a good breakdown of the views.  For example on the Bieber video it is most popular with females 13-17.  It is not only the #1 Most Viewed of All Time, it is also #1 Most Viewed-Music, #1 Most Discussed-Music, and #3 Most Discussed All Time.  There have been 912,021 comments and 746 Video Responses.  By the way the Most Discussed video is 10 Questions that Every Christain Must Answer which is #69 on the Most Viewed and not surprisingly its top audience is Males 45-54.  Back to the Bieber statistics.  There were 242K Likes, 155K Dislikes, 912K Comments, and 7K Favorites.  It went online February  18, 2010 as compared to 'Charlie Bit My Finger Again' which went online May 21, 2007.  Now for the Top 25 Most Viewed YouTube videos as of July 31, 2010:

1. Justin Bieber-Baby - 267,295,666

2. Lada Gaga-Bad Romance - 254,520,378

3. Charlie Bit My Finger, Again - 214,817,675

4. Evolution of Dance by Justin Laippply - 148,442,064

5. Miley Cyrus-Party in the USA - 142,854,615

6. Pitbull-I Know You Want Me - 134,496,469

7. HaHaHa - 130,854,614

8. Shakira-Waka Waka - 132,124,478

9. Miley Cyrus-7 Things - 126,908,824

10. Lady Gaga-Just Dance - 118,168,095

11. Jeff Dunham-Achmed the Dead - 116,413,942

12. Miley Cyrus-The Climb - 102,271,007

13. Lo que tu Quieras Oir - 101,997,077

14. An Experiment - 92,856,227

15. Vanessa Hudgins-Say OK - 89,913,850

16. Timbaland-Apologize - 87,803,509

17. Jizz in my Pants - 86,929,512

18. Rihanna-Rude Boy - 85,427,560

19. Potter Puppet Pals - 84,168,898

20. Tootin Bathtub Baby Cousins - 83,866,171

21. Katy Perry-Hot N Cold - 82,988,110

22. Barack Obama Hillary Clinton - 82,957,339

23. Jonas Brothers-Burnin Up - 82,812,107

24. Jonas Brothers-SOS - 81,310,568

25. Britains Got Talent - 80,726,900

It's not surprising that what I would call teen music videos (Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers have the most views.  This is I believe not only because these artists are popular in music sales but because these videos are high is production value.  One of my favorite videos is Lady Gaga's Telephone where in 2 spots [she is in prison] she has burning cigarette glasses and soda cans built into her hair.  Understand I'm a country music fan but the tune is catchy, there are some really good dance scenes, and the effects I mentioned are I think incredibly creative.  I must say I was uplifted that the little girl from Britain's Got Talent made it and not Susan Boyle.  Finally there are some in the list that I don't understand why they have had so many views.  These are Evolution of Dance, An Experiment, and the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton videos.

To make it easy, here is a link to the 100 most viewed videos.  And now someone's Top 100 Videos in 3:20:

So if you're interested you can check out any or all of these videos and now you know how to find data and what data is available.  It will be interesting to recheck these after some time to see what's changed.  Personally I keep hoping for some Kitteh videos to make it...

So what do you think of the list or what is your favorite viral video on YouTube?

 

 

Google Search Tips Video

I made a 10 minute video on Google search tips.

Click here to view the video.

Google Search Tips

  

Search engines include Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, Lycos, AltaVista, and Dogpile which does fetches instead of searches, but the mother of all search engines is Google.  70% of consumers search Google first.  So I thought it might be helpful to provide some basic search tips on Google. 

There are 3 types of tools to help focus your search:  Operators, Field Search Commands, and Helpful Characters. 

Operators- These are words that helps focus, limit, or exclude certain terms.  If you use them they must be in all capital letters.  A few examples of Operators are:

    AND - Google assumes you put AND between words so if your search is peanut butter and jelly Google will assume you are looking for sites with peanut and butter and jelly.  If you input it as (peanut butter) AND jelly you will get the combination.  The parenthesis is another hint to aid in clarifying searches.

    OR - Use OR if you want to find joined words.  An example might be dogs OR cats which would return results for either dogs or cats delivering more results than dogs AND cats which would have to include both.

Field Search Commands - Helpful when you get an initial search but want to refine.  If you use these they must be in lower case letters and include a colon.  A few examples are:

    related: - You find one result in your search that fits your need the most and want to see others like this.  You type related: and paste the URL (address) of the site.  So it would look like related: www.website.com.

    site: - You want to search within a specific site.  Say you are looking for info on your printer on the Hewlett Packard website but don't want to go through all their search steps.  You could type myprintermodel site: www.hp.com.  This would give you pages in the HP site.

Helpful Characters - Helpful to targeting a search.  A few examples are:

    Quotation Marks - helps you group a phrase such as "regional sales manager" without the assumed AND between each word.

    Parentheses - helps to define a subset. Remember the example above of (peanut butter).  This is also helpful for complex searches such as dentist AND (Franklin OR Spring Hill OR Brentwood).

    -  This is the dash and the Google sign for NOT.  If you want dogs but not cats you type dogs -cats.

    ~  This is the symbol for synonyms and is located on your keyboard to the left of the 1 key capitalized.  An example is ~auto which will return searches for auto, car, truck, etc.

There are also several sites that have lists of hints.  You might consider bookmarking these:

Explore Google Search

Google Guide

Google Search Hints.com

Finally on all Google Search results you will find a link for Advanced Search just to the right of the Search button.  This takes you to a form which steps you through your search criteria and automatically inserts the correct format.

Google's search algorithm is very complex and secret.  They constantly strive to anticipate what you're really trying to find but if you give them a little help, it should increase your search quality and reduce your search time.  Good hunting!