DogBytes

My new project, up and launched for about 7 weeks now.  It is all about helping business go green and do so profitably.  http://www.greencollareconomy.com

Google.  {goo-guhl}

Noun:  800 pound gorilla that decides whether your site gets a ton of traffic or not.

Ah, Search Engine Optimization....the mad science, er, art.  It's something that we all have to be very good at if we want our online properties - or our offline ones - to succeed.  We all know about tagging, and setting up the site in the proper manner, defining keywords that we want to shoot for ownership of....but what about the blocking and tackling work necessary to make Google sit up and pay attention?  Who is doing that?

 A couple of thousand incoming or reciprocal links would be just the ticket, but who is going to get all of those for you?  Good question....and FuelDog just found an answer for you.

HoneyPot Marketing is a SEO firm that hires out full-time link gatherers for your on-line properties in India for short money.  They do nothing except find sites that are going to raise your profile and convince them to link to your site - sometimes in exchange for a reciprocal link, sometimes without.  All of the employees in India speak english, but the process, verbiage and strategic focus is set by you.  I haven't started using them yet, but the rewards of 160 hours per month of effort going to link building can't help but pay huge dividends. 

If it is important to you to 'own' some words, this is an answer that will provide a serious ROI.  Tell 'em FuelDog sent you.
 

How's everyone doing?  Wow, have I been busy, and I have to admit a little lazy about (this) blog...and frustrated (last week when I finally spent the time to write a new post, and I lost the whole thing when I tried to upload an image, grrrrrrrr).  When my father - of all people - pulled me aside last weekend and said, 'what's going on, I miss DogBytes', I knew it was time to get back in the game.

There is so much going on with social media, the economy, politics (don't get me started), that it is hard to know where to start.  However, today I ran across a piece of news about my favorite medium that made me sit up and take notice - Email is still the killer app of web marketing. 

How can this be you ask?  With the amount of spam we are innundated with?  Haven't the pundits all declared Email dead for years?  Isn't it all about web 2.0 nowadays?  Well apparently, it's all about Email, which is alive and kicking like Bruce Lee.

According to Datran Media, which interviewed over 2000 media and marketing insiders, Email is the most effective marketing medium, produces the highest level of ROI, performs better than any other channel - including search - and is an area that almost all companies are planning on increasing spending on.  See the survey results here. 

The fact of the matter is that Email is critical to each and every one of us.  Try being without it for a day and watch your productivity disappear.  We spend time in our inbox, it's as simple as that.  When messages show up there, they have a higher likelihood of breaking through. 

Over the 8 years I've been writing DogBytes, Email only comes up maybe once a year...but every time it does it is because it is still exceeding expectations.  How is it making money for you?

Thanks to friend of FuelDog Mary Ellen Powers, I am now aware of the most serious competitor to Linked In, and it is none other than Facebook.  A new Facebook Group was started 11 days ago, yes eleven days, called 6 Degrees, that now has almost a million members.  They have joined with the goal of empowering all of them to get in touch with anyone in the world through their circle of friends and the power of the 6 degree rule.  They even have a famous person of the day contest in which they post a celeb's name and see if any of the group members can get to him.  Today's is Sean Connery.

There are no restrictions on whether it should only be business people (and there are a lot of young people and college students on there), so Linked In has the key business person demographic over this experiment. However, with all of the professional friends I have on Facebook, and their 40+ MM members, I may start a group on Facebook called Link'd In and try to restrict it to only people who have been in the business world for more than a few years to see what happens. 

Thanks MaryEllen, Facebook is sick.

NOTE:  It has gone up to 940,072 in the amount of time it has taken me to write this post.  Figuring it took me 12 minutes to write the post (and that may be exagerating it), that is 386 new members per minute.  How ya doin?  I had to update the image!

Well, I finally got around to trying to track down Kevin Bacon using Linked In, and the whole thing was a little anticlimatic.  I forgot that the Hollywood Reporter has been a happy FuelDog client, and when I reached out to some of my contacts there, they said "oh yeah, that's a funny idea, do you want his agent's email address?".  So, it looks like I am only two steps away from our old pal from Footloose.

More interesting news about Linked In, it seems that Rupert Murdoch is interested in potentially acquiring the company.  This is something that the shrewd old bastard would do.  Consider what TechCrunch UK had to say about it:

LinkedIn is also on an upward growth path which makes it a good acquisition target. It has more than 16 million registered users globally, spanning 150 industries in more than 400 economic regions and in the last year it experienced 189% growth. It is now the largest professional networking site in the UK, with over 1m users. It has a high calibre of members too - senior executives for 96 of the FTSE 100 companies have their own LinkedIn profile pages. In the US, all of the Fortune 500 companies have an executive level presence.

To me, that sounds like a winner.  Fortune 500 executives have big checkbooks, so advertisers would like to reach them.

Keep your eyes out for developments on this front, and don't be surprised if there are a lot more ads in Linked In in a couple of years - not to mention a Fox News neocon flavor (ungghhhhh).

Conversations about Linked In have been flying around the DogHouse since we decided we had to figure out what it is good for.  There are a lot of things that it offers (more on that in another post), but the original concept it was built on was that you can use your network to connect to colleagues in your network's network and so on, until you get to the person you need.

So, in typical FuelDog fashion, we decided to test the effectiveness of this premise, and do so in our slightly unorthodox, inimitable style.  Over the next couple of weeks, we've decided we are going to try to get in touch with Kevin Bacon.  I'll keep you up to speed on how it goes.

About a week ago, I said to myself, 'Self, Linked In invitations just keep appearing...not a ton, but steadily.  Maybe it's time you got off your lazy ass and invited some people from your network to Link In.'  So I did...sent out about 100 invites and almost all of them have Linked In.  I also made the promise in my invitation that I would figure out why we are all joining and what the damn thing is good for, to which many colleagues and friends responded, 'great...let me know as soon as you figure it out.'  I've put an intern on it and we are trying to come up with something.

Regardless of the utility of the B2B social network, Linked In is growing like crazy (I think we are all doing it out of peer pressure, but we don't know why).  According to Nielsen Online, Linked In is the fastest growing social network on the web, growing faster than Facebook (hard to believe) or MySpace.  4.9 million users logged in last month, up 3.2 million users over a year ago.  Pretty heady numbers.  And of course, the audience is what all of you B2B media companies and associations out there are looking for...business professionals. 

So, with that said, FuelDog is going to keep checking into Linked In and will let you know if, why and how you should use this thing to add value to your business and to you personally.

OK, so I had a flu shot and am having an allergic reaction.  This has put me in a particularly ornery mood, and I'm ready to rant.  What have you seen lately that you want FuelDog to dig into for you and give you an opinion on? 

A new web 2.0 startup

User Generated content

A widget or a piece of software

One of the announcements by the big guys?  Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Nielsen acquisitions or new offerings.

Pop me an email, and I will get the crack team on researching and get back to you with a no holds barred opinion.  It's what FuelDog does best...especially when sick.

I've had to do more faxing in the last 5 weeks than I have in the last 5 years (a rush of NDA's, contracts, legal documents, blah, blah, blah).  And you know what I've remembered?  I frickin hate fax machines, that's what.  Print, get up, walk across the room, forget the frickin fax number back at your desk, walk back, retrace your steps, wait around for the thing to connect, hope you dialed the right number, Oh C*%P a paper jam, try not to smash the goddamn thing, clear it.....Aaarrrhhgghhh!

The only reason we are still doing this is because there is no standard for an electronic signature....a problem that Verisign went public claiming they were going to solve, but never even came close.  Can the government please step in and define a standard?  You could give someone a monopoly for 5 years (like Network Solutions) on the standard, and then open it up.  How hard can it be?  It's a big database with encryption and some process standards and access protocols/clearance.  The government tells Microsoft, the big email client developers and web guys to play ball or else, and you drop an easy to use interface into all of them, so that anytime you need to you can easily make a signature a 'legal signature' by clicking a few buttons (This could be the idea that creates a mass market for biometrics...hey...that's a good idea government, have the biometrics associations pay for the development, and it's free!). 

Oh sure, electronic signatures would help the economy in a bunch of ways, and create a lot of benefits.  That's all well and good...I just want the fax machine gone.

Holy crap.  I've been reading about the Microsoft v. Google courtship of Facebook, but I was not expecting a number like $240 Million for a measly 1.6% of the company...see what opening up your platform in order to provide value for your constituents can do?

According to the Associated Press in their boil down of the recently announced deal:

BIG MONEY: Microsoft Corp. bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for $240 million, valuing the rising Internet star at $15 billion.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE: The deal gives Microsoft an additional platform for selling ads as it tries to catch up with online search leader Google Inc. It gives Microsoft a toehold in social networking, an area where both Yahoo and Google have struggled.

FACEBOOK FUTURE: Microsoft's investment should help with Facebook's ambitious plans to expand, including to markets outside the United States. Facebook users, who are encouraged to expand their ties through messaging, photo-sharing and other tools, shouldn't see any immediate changes.