Out of the Fog Marketing

Think viral marketing can't work for high-tech, B2B companies? Think again. Assay Designs of Ann Arbor has recently released Life Outside the Lab -- a microsite containing hilarious images of employees in lab coats doing everything things here around Ann Arbor. Visitors can submit their own images or videos of "life outside their lab" for a free t-shirt.

Labels: ann arbor, ann arbor business, assay designs, social media, viral marketing

Barack Obama has pledged to create a Cabinet-level position of Chief Technology Officer if he's elected. Business Week names the possible candidates as Google Chief Internet Evangelist VInt Cerf, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. While all these names are interesting choices, they are all in the internet/software space. How about someone who knows something about energy technology? It is encouraging thought that the bantered about names are from industry, not Washington insiders.

Labels: amazon, ann arbor google, barack obama, cabinet positions, cto, jeff bezos, microsoft powerpoint, steve ballmer, technology officer, vint cerf, washington

posted by Chris Slocumb  # 2:11 PM 0 Comments

An EMetrics survey released today states only 15% of respondents plan to cut online marketing spending. The online survey, which had 60 respondents, found marketers will increase or maintain their budgets for e-mail, keyword search campaigns, social media and video advertising. Nearly 84% of respondents said they planned to increase or maintain their e-mail marketing budgets.

This is consistent with our business with many of our new leads coming in the areas of web marketing such as pay-per-click campaign optimization, organic search engine optimization, link building, and online reputation management.

Labels: emetrics, improve search engine rankings, marketing budgets, michigan survey, online marketing budgets, online reputation, pay per click, web marketing michigan

The topic of Blog Action Day this year is poverty. So we would like to proudly announce that we have funded our 14th entrepreneur through Kiva microloans. Kiva has added some exciting features recently including the ability to reloan money as soon as it becomes available in your account instead of waiting for an entire individual loan to be repaid.

Labels: blog action day, kiva, poverty

Congratulations to our client Cielo MedSolutions who received word they would receive up to $2 million from the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund. Although the competition was open to across the state, eleven Ann Arbor busiensses garnered the award.

Labels: 21 century jobs fund, ann arbor business, cielo medsolutions, michigan

Companies just entering the world of search engine optimization are often floored when we tell them that just putting up a website--even with all the best on-page optimization-- will not get high organic search rankings for highly competitive terms. You must build back links - links from other web pages, preferably high quality ones, back to your website.

You can check your sites' back link count on Marketleap's link popularity tool or any number of free online tools.

Most web marketing agencies can help you with an initial back link building campaign and then can outline a plan on how to build more back links over time. Some of our favorites are:

1. Write a blog and back link to it
2. Comment on blog posts with high quality that allow website URLs in the comment post line.
3. Write informative articles and submit them to articles banks such as www.ezinearticles.com and www.buzzle.com .
4. Distribute press releases over reputable wires or through prweb.com. In addition to wire distribution, make sure your local or industry press gets the release. Back links in any online media coverage you get is far more valuable than the wire service link.
5. Create Squidoo lenses.
6. Submit your site to free online directories. We hire interns from our local university to do this.
   

Labels: backlinks, link building for SEO, marketleap, website design

Looking for eco-friendly marketing swag? Check out AllinOneLine's new produdts.

Labels: ecofriendly, green, marketing giveaways, swag, tradeshows