Out of the Fog Marketing

Notice the weird changes to the Google logo the last two days? Read PC Magazine's take on what it all means. All will be revealed at the press conference coming up today.

Labels: ann arbor google, google, logo, press conference

Online research company Hitwise reports Google accounted for 72.11% of all U.S. online searches conducted in February, an 8% increase over the same period last year.

Labels: ann arbor google, hitwise, internet searches, research

TechTarget and Google released an excellent report on how IT pros use search during the purchasing process. One data point is IT buyers use the internet to search for comparisons late in the buying cycle. So search phrases such as "product x vs. product y" or "server virtualization comparison" are popular with decision makers late in the purchase process. Our own campaigns backup this data.

However, be aware you'll get very high exit rates off comparison landing pages unless you provide useful objective information, testimonials and hard data. You just can't put up your product collateral and promotional materials.

Labels: ann arbor google, ann arbor marketing, b2bmarketing, it, it marketing, market research, marketing to it buyers, techtarget

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

Douglas Merrill, CIO of Google was quoted in the March 18, 2008 issue of the Wall Street Journal:

"Fifteen years ago, enterprise technology was higher-quality than consumer technology. That's not true anymore. It used to be that you used enterprise technology because you wanted uptime, security and speed. None of those things are as good in enterprise software anymore [as they are in some consumer software]."

Consumer software, especially free to very low-cost online software such as Google Docs and Basecamp have leveled the playing field for small businesses. I can't wait to see what's next.

Labels: ann arbor google, basecamp, cio, consumer, douglas merrill, enterprise, Google docs, marketing technology, online, software

According to Forrester, 11.2% of online adults in the U.S. publish a blog at least once a month. Of the same group, 24.8% read a blog and 13.7% comment on a blog at least once a month. The numbers are higher for youths. Of online youths, 20.8% publish a blog, 36.6% read a blog, and 26.4% comment on a blog at least once a month.

However the complete Business Week article details why some businesses are shifting from blogs to social media sites. It's an interesting idea now that Twitter posts are being indexed by Google and only takes seconds to write compared to the longer time commitment for a well-written blog post.

Labels: ann arbor business, ann arbor google, blogs, businessweek, corporate blogs, forrester, number of blogs, social media, twitter, young bloggers, youth

Ann Arbor SPARK hosts Everything You Wanted to Know about Feedburner, Blogs and RSS Feeds this Tuesday night December 4th from 5:30pm-7pm at the Ann Arbor Google offices. The session will be lead by Brent Hill who is the Team Manager in the Global Media Solutions division at Google.

Labels: ann arbor business, ann arbor google, blogs, feeds