Out of the Fog Marketing

Ever wonder the keywords your competitors are targeted? Or how much they are paying for a click on a term Google Adwords? How about approximately how much they are spending each day on sponsored search.

Find the answers at KeywordSpy. Type in a keyword or phrase and the tool gives the top paid and organic competitors. Enter a domain, and it will give you the domain's approximate search budgets along with targeted key phrases.

It's invaluable information when scoping out competitors.

Labels: keyword analysis, keyword research, keywordspy

If your an iPhone user and often find yourself brainstorming product or company names, check out Nomina. Available on the iTunes store for $14.99, Nomina checks domain availability and searches the U.S. Patent & Trademark office for pending or registered trademarks with the same wording. It also will conduct a common law search using The Library of Congress, Google, Thomas Guide and more.

We can't wait to try it in our next branding brainstorm.

Labels: branding, naming, nomina, outspring, trademarks

Online video can truly differentiate your products and services by personalizing you and your company. Read our best web video best practices.

Labels: best practices, online videos, online video marketing, web video

Many of the lower cost press release distribution services are now allowing you to specify a distribution time. I'm often asked "what time of day should I issue a release"?

Unless you are trying to stem a crisis requiring an immediate release, I have found 7:30am-8:00am in your "target timezone" to be the most effective. Note your "target timezone" may be different than the location of your business. For example, if your technology business is in Dallas but you want to reach out to the San Francisco tech media, a 7:30am PST release would be advisable.

I would be interested what others have found to be most effective in terms of timing.

Labels: online public relations, press releases., time of day, timing, when

Good USA Today article on which technology companies will survive the recession.

Labels: recession, tech startups, technology companies, usa today

HootSuite, formerly BrightKit, is an multi-faceted Twitter management tool. I especially like the fact I can manage multiple Twitter accounts from one dashboard. It's great for agencies managing client accounts because you can add multiple editors and pre-schedule tweets. It's our latest awesome free marketing tool.

Labels: dashboard, hootsuite, preschedule tweets, twitter

We've given 17 loans to 3rd world entrepreneurs through Kiva.org. Kiva B2B recently profiled Clarity Quest. For more information on how you can give loans to businesses in developing countries, visit Kiva.

Labels: kiva, kiva b2b, microloans, social responsiblity

MatchPoint, a search-based application for finding journalists, launched this week. MatchPoint's contact management application spiders a massive proprietary database of online and print editorial content to produce a list of journalists ranked on how closely the journalists' bodies of work match the search query.
To create the list, the user enters keywords, a pitch letter, or the lead paragraphs of a news release into a search box. To ensure greater accuracy, the user can modify the search algorithm by adjusting the relative weight of four parameters: article relevance, how recently the article was written, media outlet reach, and frequency of articles.
We've signed up for a free 10-day trial, so we'll report back with findings in a couple of weeks.

Labels: journalists, matchpoint, new products, online public relations, public relations