Tele Atlas, which is a leading global provider of digital maps and dynamic content for navigation and location-based solutions, announced today that they have signed a long term licensing agreement with Google. This agreement will give Google the access to Tele Atlas maps and dynamic content in a global market of more than 200 countries from around the world.

“Google’s innovation and leadership is undisputed, and we are proud to have the opportunity to be the map foundation for one of the world’s most progressive web companies,” said Bill Henry, CEO of Tele Atlas. “This agreement is important too because it gives us access to input from a significant online community of map users, whose feedback can help us keep our maps fresh and accurate.”
“Geospatial data enhances global search significantly by organizing data and delivering results based on location,” said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps. “Tele Atlas’ map quality and the company’s innovative approach to business were the key drivers for our decision.”

The agreement between the two companies will encompass Google’s current and future map-based services, as well as their navigation offerings that span mobile, online and desktop environments. This will, of course, include Google Maps (including Google Maps for Mobile) and Google Earth. Tele Atlas, for their part, will be given access to geographical edits from Google’s global community of users.

Tele Atlas, with the previous purchase of Tom Tom, has access to the largest navigation community, which they tap to continually point out errors and corrections to maps. With the Google partnership, they now also have access to the largest internet-based community.

In the end it means more users, more accurate maps and most likely, more accurate ads when all is said and done. The real interest will be in the dynamic changes and advances to be made with a real merging of dynamic geographical information and a company that pushes for locally pinpointed mobile advertising.

Hyper Local Journalism is making headlines in the news, quite literally. Traditionally, journalists raced against time to be the first person reporting from a specific location, such as Disaster A. Whomever got there first got the story, the pictures, and the big bucks for breaking it to the news-hungry public.

Because video cameras weren’t an everyday item being carried about by consumers, and the ability to transfer that data was restricted to how fast your local mail carrier was. These things were not conducive to your every day person breaking the news.

With the full scale consumer embrace of cell phones with video capabilities and high speed data transfers directly from the mobile phone, the face of the news began to change.

Bigger news outlets found themselves one-upped on big stories that were reported first, on such sites as YouTube, by everyday Joes like you and I. It was then, and only then, that the news outlets so kindly began to ‘feature’ citizen eye witness reports on their sites. Unpaid, of course. The payment was the glory of having your cell video streaming on CNN’s website.

So how does this affect Social Media Advertising? By allowing consumers to gain a measure of control over what is shown as news , the products that they use and the events that they deem newsworthy are reaching a greater market.

Your new product could take months and years to take off with traditional advertising, but being featured in a Hyper Local Journalism streamed video on the news can skyrocket your sales in days.

If you have a products that is newsworthy and up-to-the-minute-relevant, consider submitting a video of it by Hyper Local Journalism.

The government is choosing a watch-and-see approach to online advertising, deciding to stall the inevitable hands-on, for now. At Thursday’s U.S. House Small Business Committee hearing on online advertising, Google was one of the main topics of conversation, though they did not officially participate.
One of the main topics of discussion from the committee members was their concern over the recent Google/Yahoo deal, and the possibility for governmental regulation on online advertising. It is probably that the merging of such online Search Engine giants was the impetus for discussions on regulation. When any sector grows so big so fast, the need for regulation to serve as consumer and business protector is always discussed. Unchecked growth in a market with few competitors can lead to price and practice gouging, but for now the House is not instilling regulatory measures.
CickZ has quotes from many of the participants in the house discussion.

“Do we allow market forces to play out?” Gonzales wondered. “I’m a strong believer in that…up until the point that we feel that there is a disadvantage…and the consumer or the businessperson is no longer on a level playing field or treated fairly.” He also briefly expressed an interest in user tracking as it relates to ad targeting.

Now if this was about any other sector in the business world, the merging of the two dominating corporations in the field would almost assuredly bring about regulation, so why is the government still choosing to watch and see how the market will play out in all of this? Probably because the online advertising business is still considered new territory and there isn’t enough understanding of the practices to instill regulation, yet.

Local Pay Per Click campaigns can offer a business a fast return on their marketing budget bucks in comparison to waiting for an organic SEO campaign to build, but that doesn’t mean a business should jump in blind. Here are some of the basics about Pay Per Click advertising.

What’s the point of Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click is an online marketing strategy that is used to increase site traffic and get your business’s name out in the market.

How Does PPC Work?
Basically, your business will bid on keywords that relate to your products or services. The amount of your bid is what determines the ranking of your ad on search engine pages. If you want to sell ‘Safety Scissors’ and your competitor currently holds the number 1 ranking spot for that keyword, with a bid of .10 per click, you can try to outbid them for the number 1 spot for that keyword.

How Can I stretch my PPC budget?
You can stretch your Local Pay Per Click budget by going after keywords the smart way. If you are selling Safety Scissors, but your competitor holds the number one spot on the search engines for that keyword at a price you aren’t willing to match, try a variation. Bid and use the phrase “Buy Safety Scissors.”

The logic is simple. Many people might type in Safety Scissors if they are doing research on the product, or looking for price comparisons, or just curious, but when they’re ready to buy, they will often type in ‘BUY Safety Scissors.”

Michael Brito on Britopian.com began his own coversation on the merits of Social Media conversations verses tradtional search impressions. Obviously each person is biased by their personality in regards to what they value more.
Michael wrote:

So to address the original question of “What’s more important: a million impressions or 5 relationships? and considering that I am referring to all web users in general, I would say it depends who you ask. Paul would say impressions and then narrow it down to a click-through rate – conversion rate – revenue per keyword – cost per acquisition – blah blah blah. Yes, he is THAT ANALYICAL. For me it was about engagement, relationships, conversational sentiment and tone; and I could care less about the clicks and impressions.

Now, Michael’s aquaintance was ‘That Analytical Guy’ focused on the hard numbers, and let’s face it, most companies drill down to the importance of a number. If it’s not quantifiable, than it can’t be put in a spreadsheet. If it’s not in a spreadsheet, then the top execs aren’t looking at it. If the top execs aren’t looking at it, it’s not important. The aquaintance was obviously biased based on what his job, and his personality deemed important. He was a numbers guy.
Michael, on the other hand, is a bigger-picture-guy. He wants to build the relationships, which are the backbone in social media marketing, in order to build his business. That the two of them work together is probably a sign of a healthy buisness strategy.
It’s Michael’s next point that intriqued me:

I would also say that the users who were browsing HP Shopping were “ready to buy” and could care less about engagement and conversations at that precise moment; which is probably a common scenario for most e-commerce related businesses, where users do want to be sold something.

It’s true that once customers are on your site, they’re ready to buy, especially if they’ve clicked directly to you and are searching your products, and Michael explicitly recognizes that.

To do social media justice, however, you have to remember that a good company reputation thorugh social media is imperative. For the social influencers, a bad experience with a company can spread like internet wildfire, and the hundred and thousands of social contacts will read about that bad experience, and believe me, they’ll stay away from the company. The same is true of a good experience read by thousands of contacts…the company in question will be left with a good impression (HA!) in thousands of potential customer’s phychees.

Matt Cutts from Google gave an interview in USA today that provides a basic primer for the SEO newbie on how to get your site optimized for Google. In the article Matt gave tips on increasing your site’s visibility to Google.

1. Spotlight your search term on the page. “Think about what people are going to type in to try and find you,”
2. Fill in your “tags.” When creating websites, Internet coding language includes two key tags: title and description.
3. Get other sites to “link” back to you. Google says it looks at more than 100 pieces of data to determine a site’s ranking. But links are where it’s at, once your search terms are clearly visible on your site and the title and description tags correctly marked.
4. Create a blog and post often. Blogging is a great way to add links and start a conversation with customers and friends. It will cost you only time: Google’s Blogger, WordPress and others offer free blogging tools. With a blog, you can link back to your site and offer links to others. It’s also a great way to start building content.
5. Register for free tools. Google’s google.com/webmaster offers freebies to help get your site found.

The advice offered in the article is a great starting point for people unfamiliar with SEO and SERPs, but it’s not going to be a shining beacon of ideas for webmasters and online advertising gurus. In the article, Matt does say that it is only a myth that you have to advertise to get to the top of Google’s searches. That is true, but depending on what your site is about and it’s keyword popularity, you’ll be facing steep competition for traffic. If you are a car dealer, there’s just no way that your dealership is going to show up if someone just types in “Ford Truck, Iowa.” Unless, that is, you follow some hardcore SEO strategies and have an advertising budget.

Again, it’s always nice to hear from one of the Big Boys’ specialists about what they’re considering the important factors in rankings and how to get to the top.

For the intended USA Today reader, the article was interesting but for serious business, it was a wash. If they write an article about what algorithms they’re using, however, we’ll be all over it.

Mike Blumenthal created a very insightful post regarding the Local IYP market share values. In the article he poses his ultimate question almost immediately:

Does the IYP/online business directory market share matter or has the battle already been decided? Has this category been relegated to just another niche search area where money can be made but market dominance is not possible?

Mike drills down on his comparison and discussion of the dominance of the Local Search stakeholders with some impressive number crunching that is worth taking a look.

So this brings us back to the crux of the problem, and the decision that businesses must make when considering their local advertising strategy. There are so many markets available for Local, but if the top 2 stakeholders control 70% percent of it, is it worth it to concentrate all of your advertising budget on a piece of the remaining 30% share? This is especially important if your strategy is focused so narrowly that it ignores the components needed to be at the top if its game in the larger local markets, such as Google and Yahoo.

While companies ranking the top Local markets seem to make impressive lists, it doesn’t really matter if your Local Market choice comes in third if that third piece of the pie is only a crumb.

While a growing niche market is turning to sites like Yelp! For Local reviews and recommendations, simply promoting your business on sites like this will not push you to the top of the common Google or Yahoo searches.

Again the wisest choice for your Local Advertising strategy is to look into your specific market and make the choices that are going to serve you best. While it may seem focused to drive your advertising budget towards one or two specific Local advertising markets, loosing sight of the ‘Big Guys’ will not be to your advantage.

One of the biggest reasons for the hope placed in Mobile Marketing is simply this: Most consumers would rather be dragged nekkid through a field of broken glass than be parted from their cell phones. The consumer is almost always there, at the ready, to see your advertisement.

Television and radio advertisement, on the other hand, was all about timing. If the ratings showed that half the nation tuned into “That Fabulous Show” on Wednesday nights at 8:00, then that’s when you wanted your add shown or heard, on Wednesday nights at 8:00. You generally paid dearly for that prime piece of air time, too.

So the first big difference is clear. Let’s look at the next.

Data mining for TV and Radio advertisement was spent on finding out how many people in your target audience watched or listened to which show. Once you knew that, it was just a matter of ponying up your budget to get the airtime.

Data mining for Mobile advertising is spent on finding out which segments of your target audience will look at your add before deleting it outright. Oh yes, did I mention that part? It’s true that your advertising will get to your target audience, but now that audience can do something that used to be the stuff of ad exec’s nightmares: The audience can choose to not look at the ad.

So that brings us to what should be the similarity between the two.

TV and Radio Advertisements basically held the audience hostage. If they wanted to watch or listen to their program, they had to sit through the ad.

In order to work, Mobile Ad campaign execs will have to understand that they must do the same. The audience won’t delete the message if it’s the pathway to what they really want. Be it a discounted vid or ringtone download, give your audience an incentive.

It’s not news that more and more people turn to the internet to fulfill their consumer shopping needs. The trends began years ago and the convenience of it has grown so much that where analysts used to talk about Black Friday, they now talk about Black Monday.
So it was only a matter of time before shopping sites melded with social networking sites and became social shopping sites. The concept is based on the two simple principles for consumer shopping.

1. Consumers usually ‘ask around’ to get their friends and families opinions on a product before the buy it
2. After a purchase, most consumers like to voice their (loud) opinion on what they liked, and didn’t like, about their purchase and give recommendations about the product.

The new Social Shopping site Kazowie.com is essentially a social networking site for people who shop. Is it useful? Well let’s see….

1. Consumers enjoy it because they can apply the principles referenced above. They get to ask for opinions on what they want, and they get to voice their thoughts on what they got. They get recommendations and price comparisons
2. Businesses will love it because people will talk about their products, and every business knows that favorable reviews on the internet are advertising gold. (This is also where a business can drastically affect their Online Reputation too.)

According to their site, Kazowie will:

• Create a one-stop gift registry for weddings, events, or showers. Instead of choosing registries from a select few department stores, a user can compile products from any shop. The purchaser can navigate to an online store through the registry, or find the store locally. Kazowie can manage quantities and fulfilled items.
• Create discussions and recommend products.
• Support local shops without online presence by adding products with the name and address to buy it offline.
• Be an expert by creating a buyer’s guide for products.
• Create groups and invite friends to share products of interest with group members.
• Browse through and rate online shops; see what other products each has to offer.
• Create an opinion poll to get the best recommendations from friends, family and other users on the site.
• Subscribe to an RSS feed to be in touch with friends’ activities.
• Login or create an account with existing accounts from Yahoo, Google, OpenID, AOL/AIM.

As with any Social site, Kazowie will only be powerful if people use it but the bottom line is that, as a business with a product to sell, it might be worth your time to make sure you have a presence there.

Some businesses just assume that search engine optimization is search engine optimization, out there in the black, battling it out with keywords and meta tags and links. They make no differentiation between National SEO and Local SEO, but they should.

The reality is that there are many kinds of SEO. A National SEO campaign should be run differently than a Local SEO campaign. The differences aren’t monumental. If anything the differences are small, but they add up big in the end.

Geographical Terms: If your business is focused on a certain locality or region, you need to have that clearly stated within your content, title and meta tags. When you are running a Local SEO campaign, it is imperative that you include the appropriate geographical terms in your title tags and on each and every page of your site. The geographical terms should include the city, region, and state(s) that you serve. (This is actually a controversial issue, with some experts saying that having the geo location on the home page is enough, but most experts agree that the information is so easy to add to a page that it is ridiculous to not do it.)

Location Keywords: This is crucial for in inbound anchor texts, as are citations that reference your business with the full address.

Customer Reviews: Customer reviews are one of the most important factors in Local SEO. When smaller Local businesses are competing with the big box giants for customers, a good review can steer a lot of traffic to your site. Given the option, most consumers would rather avoid the “You’re a Number, Not a Name” mentality of the big box chains.

Is your site ready to submit to search engines for promotion? Too many businesses throw their website out to the masses before it’s ready, while a little planning and foresight could make a big difference.

These are some advertising and SEO practice tips to use a checklist when you are preparing your company website.

1. Submit to Search Engines Wisely
Submit your site once every 4-6 weeks or so, with 5 weeks being a good target. While specific directories have their own criteria for submissions, try to remember that submitting too often may be viewed by the directories as spamming, giving you a lower ranking or, worse, omission. Remember to submit your site using the same domain name every time. Many of the larger sites, such as Google, have strick guidelines regarding multiple domain names that point back to the same site, especially if they are just mirrors.
If you don’t have at least your home page and 3 other pages completed, with appropriate content, wait on your submission.

Remember: “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” is not a page, it’s a bookmark.

2. Home page Prioritization
Your homepage needs to be easily read by two things: People, and Search Engines. (That includes bots.) Avoid the dreaded “Under Construction” and “Coming Soon” links. Customers don’t appreciate them, and search engines like content content content. The only time that “Coming Soon” would be okay is if you have specific descriptions about what is coming soon. But really, it’s not a great idea, so skip it altogether.

Your homepage is not generally the place for heavy flash multimedia effects. Those are difficult to optimize for search engines and visitors with slower connections may get discouraged with the time needed to get into your site and leave it all together..

Most importantly, remember, always always have a site map!

The fashion industry has had a love/hate affair with the internet for some time now.

The first factor is that fashion was traditionally a print business. Consumers poured through magazines to get photos of the latest fashion trends. What the models were wearing, what the celebrities were wearing, all it was visual and all of it was in print. The fashion industry was firmly in bed with the print industry. But times change.

Along came the internet, and with it, easy and almost instantaneous access to photos of what celebrities and models were wearing. The fashion print industry took a nose-dive, but the fashion industry itself, stores, outlets, etc., took off.

The story went a little like this:

1. Consumer saw a brilliant new gown on Celeb. A.
2. Consumer searched internet for designer
3. Consumer purchased the gown (or a knock-off) off the internet

But the story didn’t end there:

4. Consumer received gown and it either didn’t fit, or just wasn’t right for them once it was actually on
5. Consumer returned it

Fast forward a few years, and perceptive consumers are putting the fashion industry on the Local Search Marketing Map. How?

Like this:

1. Consumer sees a fabulous outfit on Celeb. A.
2. Consumer searches internet for designer
3. Consumer locates the nearest merchant selling the outfit using a local search
4. Consumer goes to the merchant to try on the outfit, and purchases it or buys another

The bottom line is this: Service providers aren’t the only ones reaping benefits from Local Online Advertising. The fashion industry is cozying up to Local Online Advertising because they provide the photos and the information, but local merchants provide the goods. Can the consumer purchase the clothing off the internet? Of course, but real fashionistas want to try the clothes on first.

If you are a local business looking to increase traffic to a website than pay per click could be your solution. While organic listings take time to grow and climb in the search engines Yahoo’s Pay Per Click is a fast convenient way to quickly get directly in front of your audience. Your local customers are no longer just looking in print and local yellow page books to find a place to shop. 

Your local audience has found that it is even easier to go directly to their computer and just look for whatever they need in a search engine rather than flipping through a book that only gets their fingers dirty. Yahoo offers an affordable solution to reaching out to your community. It is an avenue of advertising that many of your competitors are probably already using to generate revenues for their organization. Don’t think of pay per click advertising as a national campaign. You can very easily geo target your campaign and reach only the people you desire. If you are frustrated with your organic listings and waiting for your site to climb you should take advantage of a localized pay per click campaign because it could be crucial to the success of your company. Yahoo’s sponsored search website has made it very easy for you to come in and set up your campaign. Just create an account they will walk you through the rest of the process.  For more information please visit Yahoo’s sponsored search marketing site and take advantage of this traffic generating product.

There is a lot of talk about Social Networking for Business going on, so we thought it would be only fitting to write our next book review about it.

The introduction states that:

This book is written for anyone who wants to tap the power of social networking for professional reasons. Marketers, publicists, small business owners, independent professionals, job seekers, fundraisers, and activists all can find ways to profit from strategic social networking. It’s a viable business tool that opens up new ways to connect with others who can help you achieve your business goals. The goal of this book is to provide you with a solid foundation on the basics of social networking, give you some insight into future trends, and encourage you to think strategically about the best ways you can leverage the power of social networking to enhance your business, your cause, and your life.

The Truth about Profitting from Social Networking by Patrice-Anne Rutledge discusses the obvious target sites with gusto. In a chapter entitled “The Truth about the Most Popular Social Networking Sites” she goes into the myths and facts about the usability of MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube.

The really interesting parts of this book are the ones that discuss the proper use of social networking as a tool. There are wrong ways to use a social networking platform get yourself ignored or, worse yet, banned. The author discusses these and gives advice and examples in etiquette and usage to those people who are either unfamiliar with social networking, or whom have tried it and failed miserably.

At around $12-$15, depending on which market you purchase this from, the book is economical. If you’re new to the social networking market and don’t have any idea how you’ll break into it, this book will be a helpful overview and help you avoid some social networking faux pas.