Below is list of search engine marketing and comparison shopping blogs that are great resources to learn more about these direct marketing channels. The blogs below are listed in random order. This list is a work in progress and will continually evolve.

As I learn about and find new blogs to share, I’ll post them on the marketing resources and links page.

Feel free leave a comment and share other credible blogs you read with the internet community.

Search Engine Marketing Blogs
Google Adwords Blog
Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
Microsoft Advertising Blog
Search Engine Watch Blog
Rimm Kaufman Blog
Kenshoo Blog
Omniture Blog
Performics Blog
Click Equations Blog
Efficient Frontier Blog
Aim Clear Blog

SEO
Aim Clear Blog
SEO Book Blog
SEO Moz Blog

Comparison Shopping Engines Blogs
CSE Strategies
The Mercent Blog
Channel Advisor Blog
Channel Intelligence Blog
SingleFeed Blog
Go Data Feed Blog
Comparison Engines
Google Base Blog
Shopping.com Blog

Today I gave a presentation to the Vegas Young Professionals at Greenspun Media Group and shared ideas on how to network using online tools and also in person. I shared personal experiences on how I used social technology to help my friends find a job as well as use it to meet others in foreign countries when travelling abroad.

Below are presentation slides from the event. Some of this material was covered at the last presentation I have in the Chicagoland area to the Young Professionals Network from Northern Illinois University, but check out the last slide for new material.

How have you used the internet to network?

Last month I went to a search marketing conference. Before the event, I used Twitter Search and Tweetdeck to see who was attending so I could network with them online beforehand and then meet them in person. Here is a video that explains my process. How have you used Twitter to network?

Are you looking for a fun and creative way to promote brand “you” to potential employers? Have you thought of using Facebook advertising?  Why should you consider this strategy?  Advertising on Facebook is very affordable and you only pay for performance if someone clicks on your ad (CPC) or if your ad hits a certain level of impressions (CPM). The level of targeting is great to reach specific employers or titles you are targeting (i.e. see examples below).  If you are looking for a job its not about who you know, but who knows you and what you can do for them.  You need visibility. You need to put yourself out there.  You are a professional open for business and you have to tell everyone that you are available for hire. Why not do it on one of the largest social networks where you can get lots of exposure?

Assuming you have an account set up in Facebook, go to
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/ and login in.

Set up your ads with a strong “call to action” to encourage the viewer to click through. You can configure the landing page of where you want the ad directed to. In the example below I directed the ad to my blog, but you can direct it to your LinkedIn, Google profile, blog or where ever you choose.

Set up where and whom you would like to target. Do some experimenting with different campaigns to see what kind of traffic volume you might get from your settings.

Select keywords in profiles you would like to target. I’m not sure how many people actually fill in their job titles in Facebook, but if you wanted to reach those who have certain keywords such as CEO, marketing manager, or director in their profile, your ad will be targeted towards whom you selected. See the example below.

You can even target certain workplaces. Facebook targets IP addresses in a users profile to determine thier location.

You can select CPM or CPC depending on your preference. Although the screen shot below does not reflect my choice, I selected CPM because I want to make sure I get X amount of exposures. The more you bid up, the more exposures you will get. Choosing CPM is good for branding.

Finally enter in your payment information.

If you are looking to promote an event, you can use Facebook ads for this purpose.

The key here to launching campaigns is to test, test, and test to see what works best for you. Play around with the ad copy creative to see what will give you a high click through rate (CTR) in your ads. Facebook can show you statistics on the performance of your ad.

Let me know how this works for you.

Below I targeted a campaign only to my coworkers. Funny huh?

Oppportunity

Is mobile marketing really on the rise?  Although there have been many articles written about the growth in mobile marketing, does it really apply to your business? ComScore published a press release that mobile internet is becoming more of a part in our daily lives.  The LA Times commented on the press release mentioning that advertisers should pay attention to this trend.  Should we keep an eye on this… yes.  Should we invest in it?  My opinion is that if you want to be an early adopter and can do some testing while its cheap, now may be the time to get in before everyone else does it.

Mobile search

My thoughts on this is that search volume isn’t quite here yet to invest a lot of resources into mobile search.  An interesting fact I learned at SMX Advanced from attending a session on mobile marketing was that it is good for small business advertising in local search, especially for pizza delivery. Search behavior on a mobile device differs by that consumers only search by a few keywords and not long tail words.  Using mobile internet to search for product reviews while shopping in a brick and mortar store can be useful, but how effective are search ads in mobile?  Your website may not be optimized for the best user experience in a mobile device and it may be difficult to track performance of the ppc ads.

ROI and tracking

How easy it is to quantify ROI? One could track click to call to see how many calls came in from a mobile ad which resulted into a sale, mobile coupons can be tracked, mobile would be good for extending the reach and frequency of your traditional advertising (i.e. put a “keyword” in a print ad or TV campaign to text to a special number to opt into receiving messages, updates, or promotions from an advertiser.), text message marketing to blast messages like email (but this may be difficult to segment and target), use mobile for brand engagement in fun and interactive games on widgets which could be leveraged into data collection of a customers email address, name, phone number, etc.). These are just a few of the many examples of how mobile could be leveraged. The birth of the iPhone, G1, and smart phones present many opportunities for this new area to reach customers right before the point of sale.

A mobile phone is a personal device. Why would someone want to opt into receiving messages which could be perceived as annoying and intruding?  Don’t consumers already have enough to deal with from telemarketers, direct junk mail, and spam email?  Why would one want to opt into receiving messages to be interrupted to learn about a company’s product, event, or news? As a consumer, I would hope to receive one hell of an awesome offer that is of value in exchange for interrupting me.  Again, these views are my opinion based on living in North America, but other cultures may have different opinions on how they want to be communicated to on their cell phone.

International considerations

What about other opportunities in BRIC countries? Many onsumers in BRIC countries have more mobile devices than they do computers.  The size and population of China has obvious market potential.  Internet can be expensive in other areas around the world and the best way to reach people is through their phone since it may be more affordable.

Mcommerce

Ecommerce is still growing industry, but what about mcommerce?  How comfortable would consumers feel purchasing from their mobile device?  How well developed are mobi sites?  How can you make mobi sites scalable?  How would sales be tracked on a mobi website?

Its obvious that there is huge opportunity to connect with people on their personal device.  How do you plan to leverage mobile marketing for your business?

My employer is sending our team to SMX Advanced this week. I’m looking forward to attending to learn more about SEM, SEO and integrating it with social media as well as networking with everyone. I will be blogging and twitting about key takeaways I learned from the sessions to share.

Check out the agenda http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/2009/agenda

Follow my tweets about #smx http://www.twitter.com/migpascual

If you are going to Seattle, I hope to network with you there!

Last Thursday May 21, 2009, I presented at my alma matter Northern Illinois University for the Young Professionals Network event at the Naperville campus on how to use technology to promote you and your company.

Most of the presentation was geared on how to use social media and internet tools to promote your personal brand as a professional. I shared my story of how I landed an interview with Zappos using an email cover letter, a basic website template as an online resume, YouTube, blog, and how I followed up with a good old fashion snail mail inserting a business card (which promoted my online presence).

I discussed how the business climate has changed the way we as marketers have to think and connect with people and emphasized that this is the year of building relationships. A brief landscape overview of social technologies was covered, but I focused on sites that anyone can leverage to discover job opportunities, use to create a professional image, and showed ways to build relationships and network with like minded professionals on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Business Exchange.

Below are blog posts that I covered in the presentation:

Twitter
See Twitter conversations about #niuypn event.
Business Exchange
LinkedIn
Resource slides from presentation

A good question came through via Twitter in the screen shot below:

If you decide to use internet tools and social technology to create an online presence, find out what is the best way for you to communicate your message. Do you feel comfortable creating videos or would you prefer podcasts? Would you prefer recording yourself as suppose to writing a blog?

Once you figure out what is the best vehicle to communicate your message, set up your website and drive traffic to it to increase your visibility. Also check out this blog post I wrote which may answer how to integrate these technologies.

http://migpascual.com/2008/07/rank-on-the-first-page-of-google-in-less-than-2-weeks/

You can view examples on how I integrated (or link) various social sites which act as a web that spreads out to get as much coverage as possible to drive traffic to this blog www.migpascual.com on the “About Mig Pascual” page.

Thank you for your question. I hope this information is a starting point to help you discover what works for you and your business.

Today I was thinking of more ways I can put links in my FB account to drive more traffic and increase visibility to this blog.

I decided to comment on each of my pictures and put this message “If you like this picture, check out my blog http://www.migpascual.com” I was able to post this exact message on 29 pictures before FB displayed a message to “please try later.” There may be a security system in place to prevent spamming in their comment box.

My next step will be to variate the message to make each comment unique. Hopefully, I will be able to get pass the 29 comment mark.

Due to the large number of users on FB, there is a large potential to get a lot of eyeballs and traffic to your site. This should be done ethically and responsibly. I’ll try to share the results soon.

Build links to your blog using the FB wall. When your friends write on your wall, simply respond to them or comment back on their wall but share a link (which will be your blog or site that you are promoting). This would be a shameless plug, but the extra traffic you may get could be good. This is an experiment I am monitoring right now to see if it will increase traffic to my blog. I have Google Analytics set up so I can see the referrals by domain. If one of your friends have more than 250 friends, this could a good source of traffic referrals from FB. Imagine if you put a wall post on a minimum of five friends that had more than 250 friends. Your traffic should technically increase. When this blog post was written, FB remains the dominant social network in the United States if not abroad. This is one way to utilize social networks to improve your site visibility.

Check out this social media PR press release tool. There is a free trial, but for the minimal investment they charge afterward looks worth it to make your news story easy to share and viral.

I have not personally used this yet. Does anyone know if PitchEngine provides strong SEO organic value?

If you are you looking to connect with gen x and y on the web. This could be a useful tool in your marketers bag of tricks.