Tom Anthony Personal Blog

I guess it must be my ADD kicking in… A client asked my new company IMS to quote developing a couple of commerce web sites… including hosting costs. Well since I just launched the new company I have been busy… getting the banking in place, obtaining business licenses, finding and leasing office space, staffing the company. Hosting?  I had not really thought about it in terms of giving a quote since developing price grids for Pinnacle Online when I was the CEO – and that was going on four years ago!

One of the terms that was brand new back then but too new to act upon was Cloud Computing.  Cloud what? Wikipedia describes it this way:

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. …The concept incorporates infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0 and other recent technology trends that have the common theme of reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users.

So to simplify, using a combination of technologies Cloud Computing allows users access to instantly scalable  applications. Examples could include Salesforce.com or  Google Apps. Users access the online application through a web browser.

This same technology allows business owners a way to simplify managing multiple websites, or stream media, or even online secure data storage. About the best example I know of  for automated offsite computer backup online is itsoffsite (http://www.itsoffsite.com/). I interviewed company President Martin Joseph not too long ago on the web strategies podcast.

Oh yeah… the ADD thing… I better get back to posting some prices huh?

Oh yeah again… the new company website is at http://www.strategicimsweb.com/

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Now when people ask me what I do I give them the short answer; Internet Marketing Strategy. What is the Internet Marketing thing all about? Well it’s not limited to Google, although that is a great place to start. There are Search Engine Fundamentals that should be applied to your website before any comprehensive Internet marketing Strategy can be formed.  Google or “Search Engine friendly” web sites are simply one of many tactics available to you.
Other tactics include:

• Social Media marketing
  • Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not just personal tools to communicate with friends. Used correctly they can be a great resource for lead acquisition and brand loyalty.
• Mobile and Local Search
  • One of the biggest missed opportunities in internet marketing is failing to have complete and correct information about your business available to mobile phone users and  in Local listings on search engines and online yellow pages.
• Viral Marketing
  • This can cover a lot of individual examples, but essentially Viral Marketing happens anytime you create something that causes the recipient or viewer to pass the message to someone else. Probably the best example is a “send to a friend” link in an email or webpage.
• Reputation Management
  • Finding negative comments about your business online and responding positively is critical for large and small businesses alike.
• email Marketing
  • It’s not just about sending a blanket email blast. Creating content specific to each email campaign and quantifying the results will show you how much return on investment you are making… Or not making as the case might be.
• Search Advertising
  • Pay-Per-Click advertising has a whole process to learn or outsource. How much should you pay – how do you measure return, how do you find the right search terms, how do you write the ad… the list goes on and on.
• Analytics
  • Constantly refining the content of your site to both be as relevant as possible and to increase organic ranking in the search engines.
• Server Based
  • And then there are server based tweaks like a 301 redirect. If someone looks for a page on your website they should see the same thing with and without the “www” in the URL. Similarly if there are back links to your web site without the WWW the search engines may see that as a back link to a different website.

Whole books are written on each of these topics… well except the last item about redirects. So in the venue of this blog it is just the briefest hint at what can be done to help your customers find and do business with you.

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If you have been following my posts you probably already know something’s up.   I have launched a Digital Marketing – slash – Internet Marketing Company.   Here is the very original name.. . IMS Strategic Internet Marketing Services Pretty clever I think.

If we know each other personally expect a call from me in the next few weeks to tell you more about this. More to come…

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This needs no further explaination – but – Jake is really funny sometimes

From: Brian Walker

Google’s moving into the phone service business. This sounds really cool.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Adam Coppin wrote:
And really creepy that they’re going to be listening to my phonecalls as well as reading my emails, monitoring my blog and tracking my position on the globe…

As if anyone really believes the “do no evil” motto any more…

Adam Coppin
Senior Web Strategist
Web Teks, Inc. – An eBusiness Solutions Firm

Jake wrote:

In a Google World:

0730 – Set Facebook status to “Eating breakfast at Chick fil’a” – also updating my Twitter
1200 – Watch old episodes of MacGeiver on YouTube during my lunch break
1330 – Get a voice mail from a friend mentioning something about a chicken suit and a request to bring over one of your power tools
1700 – On the drive home from work, notice that billboards change as you drive down the highway, advertising a Black and Decker Robot Chicken that can break into your neighbor’s house with a paperclip

What’s so wrong about all that?

.___.                .___.
{O,o}  Jacob  Tews   {o,O}
/)__)   Developer    (__(\
-"-"- Web Teks, Inc. -"-"-

http://www.webteks.com

the xy axis in the trackball is coordinated with the summer solstice

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Here it is the night before my guest appearance on the HearSay with Cathy Lewis program and it’s not exactly cramming – but I am making sure all my social media accounts have been at least logged into.

In the process I ran across a cool little social network aggregating widget called Digsby.

From their own description; Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. It is also an email notification tool that alerts you of new email. And the triple play is that Digsby is simultaneously a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to.
I downloaded and set up the application on my home computer, and configured it to show my three main email accounts, Facebook, Twitter,MySpace,and LinkedIn accounts in about 15 minutes – but I know where to look for all my username and password codes so it may take you a little while longer than that. Now i can see when i get a new email, someone at work IM’s me, I get a friends status change – it happens from one concise application. Very cool.
Here are my various social network profiles being tracked in Digsby :

Facebook – from http://www.facebook.com/facebook sign up for an account and search for Tom Anthony

Twitter – http://twitter.com/tomanthony_com

MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/tomanthonydotcom

LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomanthonydotcom

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I’m sitting in El Asteca restaurant in cheapeake waiting for a table and freezing my arse off every time the front door opens. I’m also posting to my blog from my phone while I wait. Now that may not seem like a big deal if you’re under 40- but this is star trek stuff to me. In a second I’ll snap a picture and post it to facebook. What the heck is going on here – we seem to be reaching out to one another in a strangely intimate way. Too much computer time?

Update:

This is the photo uploaded from my mobile phone to FaceBook

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I just can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve updated this blog! Now that I’ve been invited to speak on the topic of Social Networking I figure it’s time to return to being social on the network.

Last week an old friend and colleague of mine sent me a note – pretty much out of the blue. Back at the dawn of the internet I worked for the New York Times Company at their Norfolk Virginia Television Station WTKR. I was the first “Webmaster” for Newschannel Three and had a desk in the promotions office above the studios. I had also worked as a Producer for WNIS radio – writing and producing the morning news casts for the station presented by the television news anchors.

Straight across the newsroom was Danny Epperson, who was one of the main Producers for the local news effort. I remember having fun talking with Danny about what I was doing with HTML and how the nuts and bolts of the internet were actually connected. Keep in mind this was in the early 90’s and the internet was “new” – heck – this was BG! (Before Google)

Flash Forward about 15 years and now Danny is the Producer of “HearSay With Cathy Lewis” on WHRV-FM and “What Matters” on WHRO-TV. If you are out of this market you should know that Cathy is highly respected in Hampton Roads by her peers in Broadcasting and has been doing her very popular Public Affairs radio talk show and the TV version for many years.

Danny spotted me on FaceBook and invited me to be a guest on the HearSay program this March 3rd. I’ll be talking about Social Networking… so… I came to work early this morning so I could post this tidbit to my blog and well, now we’ve come full circle.  OMG I just can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve updated this blog!

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Tom Walker and I filed a commercial for Web Teks this morning. I thought it turned out really well.  Take a look!

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I follow a lot of blogs, including one by Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey. Silverpop is a email marketing company the provides users with wizard driven email marketing campaigns – and a lot of reporting features. IN a recent posting Nussey talks about new rules which may affect you if you do any kind of list based email. This is a direct partial copy of that item, and a link to the blog is found in my blogroll.  Enjoy.

In case you haven’t heard yet, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last week enacted new rules intended to clarify the original provisions of the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act. The supplementary ruling, which goes into effect June 26, may have important ramifications for your email marketing program. I encourage you to seek the advice of your legal counsel about how these new rules may affect your programs. In the meantime, here’s a summary of the key provisions for discussion purposes:

Mandated Simplification of Opt-out Processes
The new rules clarify the opt-out required under CAN-SPAM. You’ll want to examine your opt-out process to determine if it is in compliance with this new rule, which states:

The opt-out may not be conditioned on the payment of any fee.
The recipient must not be required to provide anything more than email address and associated opt-out preferences for that email address (i.e., no password, account number, name, etc. can be required).
The opt-out mechanism must rely on either a reply email or a visit to a single Internet Web page and nothing more (i.e., multiple Web page opt-out processes are no longer allowed).
P.O. Box Usage Confirmed
Businesses may publish a sender’s P.O. box or private mailbox in a commercial email message to comply with the valid physical postal address requirement.

Designated Sender Rule Established
This new rule provides a framework whereby multiple advertisers that appear in the same commercial email message, each of which normally would satisfy the Act’s definition of “sender,” may designate a single sender among them as the sole sender of the message. If you routinely engage in list rentals or joint promotions, you will want to examine this provision closely.

Rules Regarding Incented Forwarding
The new rules confirm that if a company offers something of value (e.g., sweepstakes entry or discount) to incent a user to forward a commercial message to a friend, the company providing the incentive is held responsible for complying with CAN-SPAM as a Sender of the resulting message.

The FTC was widely expected to collapse the amount of time senders have to comply with an opt-out from 10 business days to three business days, but no change was issued. The 10 business day opt-out rule remains in effect.

The Email Sender & Provider Coalition has issued a summary of the new rules, which you can check out here. Or, you can access the full FTC text by clicking here.

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This is a real email I answered from a client – I just left out the name

Hi V!

It is like a radio talk show – usually on a very narrow topic. For example apple has a podcast about the original recordings of songs selected by American Idol Contestants I listen to – you have to love American Idol to even be interested – and thankfully (so I don’t feel like an idiot I am not alone – it is downloaded thousands of times apparently.

From what I can tell it looks like my podcast is downloaded an average of 143 times a day after not quite two months and five shows posted. To tell you the truth I can’t believe that many people are interested in this stuff! If I get listed in the Apple website as a “top 100″ most popular podcast the downloads would go up exponentially – some business podcasts are downloaded tens of thousands of times. It’s stunning.

You don’t have to have an iPod to listen, you can hear it on the website at http://webstrategiespodcast.com/ but you may personally find it a little dry.

Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Tom

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