Frost yourself!

If you haven't seen the movie How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, you probably wouldn't get the title of this blog, but allow me to explain. In the movie the female character comes up with this tag line for the male love interests' jewelry advertising campaign. This idea goes over great and they fall in love of course, but this is not the point.

I believe that in the internet marketing a company must frost itself. This can also apply in reference to your personal branding.

It is definitely essential for a new company or product to be branded through many outlets. The internet is a great place to brand. You can place display ads on websites that appeal to your targets, you can create awareness to an entire generation through Facebook or Myspace, and you can pay for keywords that relate to your product or company to ensure that viewers begin to associate you with these words. You can also use Search engine optimization to improve your rankings for your products or services (Reference.) If you could come up with a great new idea for the internet and have people all around the internet referencing you (ex. Just Google it!..Googler), then you must take this approach to branding.

In the same frame of mind, if you are a young professional, or a professional of any age you should definitely look into branding (and frosting) yourself. First of all, you need to Google yourself. What does your keyword say about you? Now, for some with common names or who share their names with famous people, this could get more difficult. You will have a lot more competition to get to the top of the page. Luckily, my mother and father decided to give me a name no one can pronounce correctly so branding myself has been relatively easy for me. It can be easy for you too!

Potential employers may search your name and do you want the first thing they see to be you in your scandalous halloween outfit on facebook. I think not! If you would rather your facebook account not show up on search engines then you better make sure you opt out of that. This could definitely be damaging to your professional reputation, unless you are a professional party girl (or boy) a la Paris Hilton.

Now, a little shout out to my professor, James Moore. In his words, "if you are not on Linkedin, you need to be." This is definitely the truth. My Linkedin profile is one of the first results when you search my name. It is definitely good to have the information up to date.

If you were to Google me you would see Facebook, Linkedin, a awful poem I don't remember writing, this WONDERFUL blog, and some of my interests and alumni clubs. I will honestly admit without shame I Google myself regularly to ensure that my reputation is still in tact and that I am taking up the first page. Honestly, who looks at page two? I plan on continuing to frost myself online, by keeping up with this blog and linking it to sites that are crawled regularly by search engine robots. This is another tip :)

Be sure to check yourself out...add some frosting to your online presence!

The same thing won't work for everything!

Being part of the internet business world I have come to find myself thinking that every business should be involved in internet marketing in some way. I always try to come up with products or businesses that could not benefit at all from doing online marketing. It's like trying to find something either chocolate or ranch dressing would not taste good on. Can you think on anything?

I digress. I have not yet found a product or company that I do not think could business from viral marketing, blogging, search marketing, etc. I have, however, found many products or companies using internet marketing in perplexing ways. As I was reading Adage.com I found this article which says exactly what I was thinking. Why and the heck do some brands have the desire to use a media outlet that makes absolutely no sense in line with the brands values or objectives.

Please follow the link?

http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=131347&search_phrase=digital+cliches

Advertisers, please learn that Facebook did not become popular because people wanted something to look at. Please desire interaction, or at least FUN! Please do not make a page on facebook and invite people if you absolutely nothing to offer. Also, I have not seen a Centrum Silver page on facebook and I am hoping it does not exist. There are clearly demographics for different websites, blogs, etc. Don't go somewhere that doesn't fit your target audience unless you are trying to rebrand or something crazy like that!

More to come. Please enjoy the read!

You gotta start somewhere...

I really never wanted to blog, but now that I have to maybe I will learn to love it! This is my hope.

I guess I will start with a little story about Internet Marketing and Ethics. I am currently employed by a search engine marketing agency, and have been for over a year. I have learned to be more aware of best practices for search marketing and I have been paying more and more attention to the advertisements that are served to me when I am on a search engine, or even on any website that has affiliate or content driven advertisements.

Story begins now: When my roommates and I heard of the cheerleader beaten and videotaped we were appalled decided to search MSN to find news articles about this tragedy. Article. I will not mention the girls name because I want to try to avoid using a tragedy to direct traffic to my blog. Interestingly enough, this is exactly what I found when I entered the girls name into the search engine. A large retailer, with a great reputation for outfitting women, bidding on this poor girls name. I would like to hope this happened by accident, and because one of their terms was broad matching (Definition) to the term. I contacted their media contact via email immediately and the ad was down in a matter of hours. Can you imagine what the consequences to the brand could have been if the news would have gotten out? I would have liked a thank you for saving their PR team a lot of stress...but alas I am still waiting. I am sure if I put their name in my blog I would be contacted immediately, yet I don't need a thank you that badly! Just a little lesson for those of you trying search marketing, make sure you aren't trying to profit on tragedy through online advertisement. In my mind, that is a big No No!

More to come (that was kind of fun)!
-Ryanne