Source: btobonline.com

Most marketers believe the only way to target hundreds or thousands of terms reliably is to invest in pay-per-click (PPC), which is easily measured, controlled and can provide ROI results quickly. Less attention—and far fewer resources—are spent on organic search, simply because most marketers believe there is no reliable and scalable way to target the same volume of keywords. But independent studies show that most all clicks on a search engine results page happen on the organic side. Read more

Rohit Barghava and Seth Godin know a thing or two about social media. They both use it to great effect in the marketing of their projects and themselves.

Seth Godin is an International thought leader, blogger and author who has helped redefine marketing over the last decade. Seth’s posts are some of the first I read each week amongst the dozens of feeds I have streaming in. One of his recent posts, subtly plugging his new book Tribes, explains the typical marketing cycle and how social media may have finally broken the cycle.

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Source: Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent, The Australian

It was in Knoxville, Tennessee where I was put in my place as a foreign correspondent covering a US election.

Democrat Harold Ford, a young, up-and-coming leader in the mould of Barack Obama, was running for a US senate seat andhe refused to answer any questions.

“We’re not talking to you, you don’t win us any votes,” his spokeswoman helpfully informed me.

Never mind that Ford had just said in a speech that Australia wanted to pursue nuclear weapons (still waiting for a clarification on that Harold) but I’m not at all convinced his spokeswoman’s premise holds, at least if it is also framed in the negative.

Ford lost the election. He lost for many reasons (the Republican attack machine that created a racially coded advertisement was disgraceful) but on substance there’s a chance Ford’s gaffe as I reported could have cost him a couple of votes.

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