There’s quite a storm brewing on the horizon.

No, we aren’t talking about Earl or even Mike Wise and the Washington Post. This past week, Facebook and Apple are getting the clouds rumbling with their squabble over Ping. But did anyone notice or were they all too busy tweeting from their iPads?

Other stories we’ll be highlighting include Google’s new Priority Inbox, the new Twitter app for iPads, and the general lack of interest most people show towards affixing a tracking bug to their body.

So without further adieu, here are our top picks for the week:

Surprise! People don’t want to be located.

You mean to tell me that people don’t want to broadcast where they are at any given time to the masses via the internet? We thought this might happen. Despite Facebook’s recent efforts, it seems as though location-based sites still can’t crack the code to reaching the general public.

Gmail has an important message for you (!)

Google recently unveiled the much-anticipated (and needed) “Priority Inbox”. For all you g-mailers, this means that your inbox will now consist of three parts: Priority, Starred, and Everything Else. Google hopes this anti-bologna and anti-bacn diet will help to slim your bloated inbox.

“Ping” fuzes iTunes with social networking.

This week Apple unveiled Ping as part of the new iTunes 10 software. From within the iTunes app,  Ping will allow users to “like” music, “follow” artists, and even leave comments. Sound familiar? Methinks that the people at Facebook and Twitter might have noticed as well

Twitter releases new app for iPad.

This week twitter released an app that will allow users to tweet right from their iPad. This tricked-out version allows anyone, even people without a Twitter account, to easily browse back and forth between tweets and web sites, pictures, and other media.

Facebook and Apple not playing nicely together.

So apparently the people at Facebook have taken notice. According to reports, Facebook, acting to “protect the privacy” of their users (HA) has blocked Ping users from searching for Facebook friends that are also on Ping. Once this happened, Apple “pulled the plug on the connection with Facebook friends.”

Well, that’s it.  Enjoy your holiday weekend and be sure to check back next week when we bring you reports from the frontlines of the Apple vs Facebook war.

Flickr photo courtesy of Giuliagas.

In a post in June, Aaron Wall wrote a very thorough post on how to build a brand with SEO. In that post, he outlined the importance of branding within keyword research and implementation.

Too often, the only time you see the words “brand” and SEO in the same sentence is on the ramifications Google’s “Vince” update, where big brands began usurping smaller publishers and sites in the search engine result pages (SERPs), which is a separate discussion altogether on domain trust, online reputation management (ORM) and advertising dollars. This is not one of those times.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Wall’s post, branding – the positioning of a company or product by key constituencies – gets little to no attention in SEO. In contrast, reams of content is written about the importance of branding and social media. Hourly.

So why isn’t there more discussion of branding in SEO? Practice and process.

For years, SEO existed in a vacuum, often in this magical black box. Companies paid, expected pixie dust and results, then went on their way. Over the last 10 years, the industry has obviously changed dramatically, but SEO still struggles to get beyond it’s pixie dust (and snake oil) past. There was no brand discussion, because neither side thought to ask.

Additionally, for a long time, the SEO process didn’t lend itself to knowing and understanding the client’s brand. Clients want results as quickly as possible (and rightly so), and knowing the client, the competitive landscape as well as the actual implementation was difficult enough to corral, let alone having a complex discussion on brand.

I know I’m no expert at branding, nor has every SEO firm ignored branding, but we should have been asking and understanding.

I’ve made no secret in blog posts, tweets and conversations that content marketing and development should be an increasingly important part of SEO strategy. If content ranks well, and is valued by key constituencies, it’s more likely to convert.

Therefore, if you agree content marketing is going to be a part of SEO strategy moving forward, how can you tell a client you’re going to be writing and shaping content on their behalf without understanding brand voice, especially in the enterprise? Who is asking if the content being developed breaks that brand promise?

The alternative may be ranking well with a piece of content that alienates in the long-term because it’s brand agnostic or worse, damaging.

Social media gets brought into the branding discussion so often because it’s been shepherded by PR and advertising agencies. These groups eat branding for breakfast.

The case can be made pretty easily that a company shouldn’t consider any strategic marketing until it has determined the brand. If SEO wants to be considered in the strategic marketing tool set and finally remove the black box veneer, it can no longer get a pass on branding.

Search shops have already learned that customers no longer want organic SEO to exist in a vacuum. Content marketing, social media and online PR are too important, and now too intertwined with SEO, to ignore as an SEO practitioner even today. If the future of SEO considers these skill sets, then the future SEO practitioner must also know branding.

Flickr photo courtesy of pink_fish13

As far as most of us are concerned the term “Greater Clevelander” refers to someone who lives or has lived within the Cleveland/Akron metro area. However, there are some people who like to define it a bit differently.

To our friends at United Way, it’s a philosophy, a mindset, a belief about being greater people to make the Cleveland area a better place.

The United Way will be kicking off their 2010 campaign by hosting their annual Pancake Flip in Public Square on September 2. Stop by anytime from 7-10 am for a delicious breakfast grilled up by some of C-town’s biggest celebs, local leaders, and other volunteers.

Five bucks will get you a delicious platter of pancakes and sausage and a nice glass of OJ to wash it all down. In addition to that, the first 2500 breakfasts served will receive a $5 gift card to Baker’s Square and a free ticket to the upcoming Taste of Cleveland. For those of you who are truly great Clevelanders who want to send breakfast to your friends, UPS will be making free deliveries to downtown businesses.

Word on the street is that UW is expecting to flip over 9,000 pancakes and serve 3,000 breakfasts. Just the cause is enough to get us there, but throw in that many pancakes and we are there faster than greased lightning.

As we all know, we’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch (thanks again, ‘Bron). But what we need to realize is that the solutions to the problems this city faces aren’t going to come from somewhere or someone else. We need to find it within ourselves to truly be Greater Clevelanders.

So why don’t we start to truly live up to our name?

Cross the GOOG, and they’ll drop you like a bad habit. Yelp found this out the hard way, and it made us think the same way John Battelle did, is Google objective?

Not that it matters of course, because as a publicly-held company, they don’t have to answer to the everyday Google user.  However, it’d be nice if they would from time to time. Unfortunately, the everyday Google user is too busy calling their co-workers from Gmail to care. But more on that below.

In our latest marketing technology news roundup, we also go deeper into the Google-Yelp battle, discuss the Philadelphia blog tax and why your ad budget won’t go very far on Conan.

Here are our picks for the week:

Google Maps Updates Review Policy & Drops Yelp Reviews

Feel free to click on the above article for background, but Google released a statement on the issue as to why you won’t see Yelp in Google Places:

Regarding the presentation of Yelp review snippets, neither of us was happy with the data as it appeared, so we reclassified results from Yelp while we reviewed our options.  This means that, for the time being, Yelp pages may not appear as review snippets in Place page results, though relevant results from Yelp will continue appear in the “more about this place” section, which shows  pages about a given location. We are working with Yelp to more intelligently crawl and present results from their site.

Sure you are, Google. Sure you are.

Google calling from Gmail

Just when we thought they couldn’t do anything dumber, Google goes and does something… and totally redeem themselves! Gmail unveiled their call-from-your-inbox feature this week as their assault on telecoms continues. It’s free in the US (for now), so get it in while you can. We hope we’re not the only ones that call our co-workers with this. Hourly.

That proposed Philadelphia blog tax? Not so much.

The gist: If you live in the city proper, and  your blog places ads on your site – and someone actually clicks – you need to pay taxes on the first $100K and obtain a business-privilege license, at a cost of $50 a year or $300 for a lifetime.

Here’s our take: Not in Cleveland: Philadelphia blog tax

Conan is Expensive.

If you thought you could advertise on Conan O’Brien’s new show on TBS, and get a great deal, you are mistaken. Apparently, the cost for a spot on Conan is “in the same ballpark” as on Jay Leno’s late night show. Which is interesting, because we weren’t aware Jay Leno was still on the air.

We’re not Digging new redesign

Digg unveiled their new design this week, and as with any social media site change, everyone hated it. We’re not surprised though, they’ve only been testing this for a year. Oh, and the error messages. We could do without those.

Well, you did it, the finish line is in sight. Join us next week when we attempt to discuss companies not trying to take over the world.

Philly is taxing bloggers? The humanity!

The news that Philadelphia City Council has a proposal in place to tax bloggers didn’t go over well. In fact, it may be the most uniting thing to hit the blog and social sphere since never.

If this is news to you, the Philadelphia City Paper, states the issue thusly:

In June, City Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez unveiled a proposal to reform the city’s business privilege tax in an effort to make Philly a more attractive place for small businesses. If their bill passes, bloggers will still have to get a privilege license if their sites are designed to make money, but they would no longer have to pay taxes on their first $100,000 in profit.

Essentially, the proposal states that if your blog places ads on your site – and someone actually clicks – you need to pay taxes on the first $100K and obtain a business-privilege license, at a cost of $50 a year or $300 for a lifetime. But not because you’re a blogger, but because you’re a small business.  The news went viral (ugh) when a few bloggers in Philadelphia were honest enough to inform the IRS they made a few bucks from their blog, and the city informed them to pay up.

While the Philadelphia blog scene burns with fire and brimstone, I wondered: What is Cleveland City Council’s take on the law and does Cleveland have a similar law on the books?

Cleveland City Council spokesman James Kopniske responded dutifully and promptly:

The City of Cleveland does not have a similar law to the one passed in Philadelphia. Such an ordinance is not on our radar, nor a focus of Cleveland City Council. Bloggers, like any other businesses or freelancers, must follow all the applicable laws and ordinances that cover any small business including declaring income and paying taxes if they live or work in the city of Cleveland.

Phew. With all the bad press Cleveland has received over the last year, it’s good to hear the Forest City escaped this nonsense. Long live the Cleve.

Honesty marketing has shown up in many marketer’s playbook lately.  Usually as the cornerstone of a crisis management campaign for an unexpected and unfortunate situation.  Toyota used it because of their faulty brakes. BP needed it because of the biggest environmental disaster in US history.  Domino’s had to turn decreasing sales around and confront customer feedback that their pizza tasted like cardboard. Not fun stuff to deal with and they each definitely needed good PR and fast.

Each one of these companies felt the need to break down walls and connect with their customers in an open, honest way.  In theory, if consumers can identify with your brand on a deeper, more personal level, they will be more receptive to your efforts to make a not-so-great situation better.

I’ve actually enjoyed seeing the messaging for these brands unfold.  When they stripped away the glitz and glam of their marketing mask and spoke instead from the heart of their brands, it was revealing and refreshing.

Toyota and BP responded by developing a campaign of TV spots expressing their presumably genuine feelings and actions towards making a problem right.  They highlighted employee dedication to safety and how significant the clean up efforts have been.   Of course, they did this to counter the negative press.  I know that and so does everyone else.  But the spots also reassured me that they are trying their best and I related to what they were going through, what they were doing about it and why. I do feel better about their brands as a result of seeing them.

Hearing from the head honcho also shows top down dedication to problem resolution.  Domino’s CEO talked openly about the process they went through to make their pizzas taste better.  This included a complete recipe redo, extensive focus groups and taste testing.  Taking it one step further, they will only show real Domino’s pizzas in their commercials, not the ones that are “perfected” by food stylists.  So, with all that, I truly see some significant changes and am willing to give them another try.  If they had just come out with a campaign that said “New and Improved Taste,” I’m not sure I’d even blink.

Here’s the real opportunity:  Honesty marketing is a great way to connect with customers even before a crisis hits. Why should a problem be the conduit to an open line of communication with your consumers?

Building trust is priceless when it comes to setting and delivering on a brand promise.  And the best way for customers to trust your brand is to speak to them openly and honestly.  Sharing your intentions, your goals, your process, and even your culture helps consumers relate to you and believe in your brand.   It makes your brand come alive and sets it apart from others.  And, it is far more comfortable to connect to a brand you trust than a brand out to just “sell you something.”

Honesty marketing can be messaged through mainstream or social media, direct marketing or one-on-one communications. It is a pretty versatile tool you can use to connect and engage your customers.  And more importantly, it is one that can increase long-term customer loyalty.  And honestly, isn’t that what we all want?

If you’d like some other insights on how to use honesty marketing as a part of your overall brand planning and marketing, please contact us.  We’d love to be open and honest with you!

Flickr photo courtesy of Eyeline Imagery

Where are you right now? Tell us. We promise, we’ll only tell 500 million people.

OK, we really don’t want to know (or tell 500 people), but Facebook does. We know, we know, we promised we wouldn’t always talk about Facebook. But they started it with this Places nonsense.

In our latest marketing technology news roundup, we ask if  “You’ve Got Content! ,” our passive-aggressive relationship with technology, how Hulu is growing up, and why it’s a good idea to be nice to your co-workers.

Here are our picks for the week:

AOL CEO Armstrong Aims For 500 News Websites In Local-Ad Bet
AOL is betting on Patch, the biggest network of neighborhood blogs in the country, to take the company to the promised land. The content play is purely for advertising revenue and the company hopes to quadruple the blog network in size. You’ve got content!

Facebook adds Places. This will not end well.
Sometimes we wonder if Facebook plays the tape all the way through, so to speak. Why on earth would anyone want someone else to tag them at a location? There are so many reasons why this will be an epic fail for privacy, but probably and epic win for data and targeting. We aren’t welcoming our Big Brother overloads just yet.

Hulu looking to launch IPO
Video site Hulu is dancing towards an IPO as a way to build capital and therefore increase their content hoard. Hulu, owned by Disney, NBC Universal and News Corp, has a fairly large stable of shows but it’s obvious as the site goes to a pay model, wants more.

Time Inc. breaks the iPad logjam
Finally. Subscribers to Time Inc. publications will soon be able to view iPad version of their magazines for free. Previously, the iPad versions of many mags was the same price as the newsstand, even for subscribers. Thankfully, our long, national nightmare is over. But seriously, Steve Jobs, what was the hold up on this?

Skype Chief Development Officer Gets Commented Under the Bus
In the same week it was leaked the Skype was filing for it’s own IPO, and only a month after he started, chief development officer Madhu Yarlagadda announced he was leaving the company. The reason? An “onslaught of negative comments” against Yarlagadda on a TechCrunch post announcing his new position. We’re not big fans of the newsmakers making the news, but this was too grand a show not to share. Lesson learned.

As always, If you’re behind on the news, be sure to check out last week’s Point 82 , and don’t forget to read our blog next Friday, when we hope to be Facebook free.

Flickr photo courtesy of St_A_Sh

Fact: I don’t want to like Guy Fieri.

For the uncleansed, Fieri is the star of Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” that jalopies from town to town sampling restaurants that don’t make the visitor’s bureau brochure. He’s also a hot mess of hair gel, fist bumps and bowling shirts. An unholy trinity for foodie snobs and wannabes everywhere.

Alas, I respect Guy Fieri.

But not because he says things like, “I wanna be the ambassador to Chimichanga Flavor Town.”

No sir. Although an actual Chimichanga Flavor Town would be amazing, it’s because his show can appeal to viewers on so many different levels all of which suck me in into an entire episode. How he does this witchcraft, I don’t know, but you can try to harness this power to make your content better.

How? To be more targeted and relevant to your audience on some level that gets them to click or sucks them in to stay just a little bit longer. Below I’ve outlined three main reactions people have when watching Fieri and how you can use them as a template for your content.  The more targeted the message, the more likely the visitor doesn’t bounce and actually clicks in the direction you want.

I’ve added exclamation points so you can pretend Guy is saying these himself.

The show is timeless, bro! [FISTBUMP]

No, your kids won’t be watching reruns of DDD. The show is timeless because Guy never changes. The format never changes. His hair never changes. I have no idea if the episode I was watching is from three years ago or last week.

Don’t give away that your content is dated.

People use the term evergreen content all the time, and it doesn’t just pertain to removing the date on the page. It also means the look and feel of that page, article, video or taco inhaling. Pretend your content has to be relevant for a year (or more) and update it accordingly.

Dude, that’s my hometown, yo!

The show makes it local for everyone. In a given week, even with one episode each weekday, most episodes have three separate locations. This means that Monday-Friday, the show can conceivably highlight 15 different locales. Maybe you live there, maybe you’ve been there or maybe you want to go there.

In content marketing, as many others have said before me, you have to think like a publisher and ask if you are giving your clients the content they want to read. To do this, review your existing content analytics and learn what topics/formats have been most successful and start integrating those into your editorial calendar.

You can also make it more “local” by reviewing the long-tail terms that are driving traffic but you may not be focusing content on.

I’ve never been to El Paso, but those sandwiches look money!

The topic may not be laser-targeted, but it talks about something I tangentially enjoy or am curious about so I watch.  Or, for content, I click.

So instead of writing about just healthcare marketing or just paid search, write about paid search in healthcare marketing. While it sounds limiting, you’re actually converging two much larger audiences who may be tangentially willing to read your article, blog post or webinar. So maybe you didn’t get people with the El Paso part, but you nailed the sandwich demographic.

This is why good content marketers have to excel in writing headlines, page titles, title tags, meta descriptions and snippets that get to the point and make very clear what that post/page/article is about. It’s not enough to rank well, as you only have as long as the potential reader wants to spend reading your email, the SERP or teaser to convert them.

Your content as a whole, should also appeal to visitors in a variety of ways so that in whatever form it can appear, you’re going for the clickthrough. Always, and every time.

Why? The era of tweaking sites for SEO success is over. We’re dawning on a new era of search marketing and the ability to produce sustainable SEO content (and results) must include a serious content marketing and content development plan. Otherwise, your SEO strategy is full of quick wins and cannot be replicated long term.

Chimichanga Flickr photo courtesy of Scorpions and Centaurs

As anticipated, Facebook unveiled “Places,” the ‘Book’s foray into the location based services, or as everyone calls it now, their check-in service.

Mildly interesting was that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was joined on stage by representatives of Foursquare and GoWalla, the more well-known LBSs out there. Really, the two start-ups have no choice at this point, but still, interesting.

For the most part, there’s nothing new to see here, we should all move along. Oh, except Places allows your friends to tag you at locations. Whether you’re there or not.

Wait a minute?

You know that feeling when you receive an email that you’ve been tagged in a photo? How quickly will you sprint to Facebook when someone checks you into a location? Getting the email that my knucklehead friends have tagged me at Christie’s Cabaret (because they think they’re hilarious, and it is), will be fun.

Yes, you can opt out, but with anything Facebook, the default should be opt-in, not the other way around.

The other drawback to Places is, this is still Facebook.  This is the same company that does not erase data, botches privacy rights and exposes user phone numbers.

I have a feeling, this whole Places thing may be Facebook’s Google moment, an act of arrogance that users will stop using the incumbent.  Plus, it may be my underdog mentality talking, but I don’t want Facebook to win this war. I’m a huge fan of Foursquare, and while it’s not perfect, it feels like they (along with Brightkite and Loopt) built this genre, and Facebook is just bullying their way to the top.

Small business is the backbone of our economy.  There are an estimated 29 million of them according to the SBA.  Whether you are a building products manufacturer, a financial services company, a chemical distributor or otherwise, chances are you market to and sell products and services to small businesses.

Small businesses use many sources to get information when they need to buy a product or service.  A key source is still word of mouth however you can’t rely on that alone to reach prospects and generate leads and sales.  It used to be true that the yellow pages were a “go to” source of information when in need of a product or service.  The game has long since changed thanks to the internet.  Where does this leave you?

People turn to the internet first when shopping.  More specifically, they use search engines.  They first cast a wide net to discover options.  They do their homework and research to narrow the field.  Then make a buying decision.  Remember, when you sell your product or service to small businesses, you are still selling to a person.  Using Search Engine Marketing (aka Pay Per Click) to market to small businesses is vital for many reasons.

1. Small businesses and their respective owners are busy, time-starved people.  Who isn’t these days?  Search engine marketing puts your products and services at their fingertips in a timely manner – when they need it and are looking for it.
2. Search engine marketing is the yellow pages of today.  You need to be present when your audience is in shopping and buying mode.
3. Most shopping starts online.  82% of consumers use search engines and more than 50% use it as a primary shopping tool. While this is a consumer stat, remember that people run and manage businesses.  Not the other way around.
4. If you have a website (and you probably do if you market to small businesses), you likely want to rank well for specific search phrases organically.  The reality is that you can’t rank for all keywords.  Search engine marketing (PPC) puts you at the top of the search results regardless of how well optimized your site is organically.  Studies show that if used in combination, SEO and PPC results improve – more clicks, conversions, leads, sales, profit.
5. If you’ve got a great website and nobody can find it, what good is it doing you?  Use search engine marketing as a means to be seen and generate traffic to your site.
6. Search engine marketing is highly measurable.  You can track a wide variety of metrics and understand which keywords and phrases result in site traffic, conversions, leads, calls and sales.  This allows you to optimize your spending.  And, it makes you and your budget accountable.

Whether you’ve got an existing search engine marketing program or thinking about starting one, let us know.  We’re interested to hear about your successes and challenges.

Flickr image courtesy of jm3