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TopRank Online Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association have just announced a partnership to develop and deliver a series of educational workshops on social media marketing entitled, “Social Media Smarts: Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Tactics.”

With marketers facing tighter budgets in the coming months, social media marketing offers new opportunities for companies to engage customers, improve brand awareness and increase sales with budgets that are more recession friendly than many traditional marketing efforts.

Leading the workshop will be Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, who will introduce participants to the marketing opportunities with social media through best and worst practices examples. As you can see from the photo in this post, I’m much taller than Lee.

But, according to George Markham Director, Education Services at Direct Marketing Association, “Lee is a well rounded digital marketer uniquely qualified with over ten years experience as an internet marketing consultant and a background in corporate training.” Markham adds, “As a consultant working on the front lines of social media marketing for companies large and small, Lee brings first-hand knowledge and real-world examples to teach attendees how to develop a successful social media strategy.”

But I’m still taller.

The Social Media Smarts workshop will provide attendees with insight into blogging and blog marketing, social networks, microblogging, social news and bookmarking, video sharing, image and audio sharing, wikis and social media analytics.

Rounding out the workshop is a social media strategy exercise that will empower attendees to create their own social media strategy and develop a framework for building a business case within their organizations.

Lee is quoted in a press release as saying, “As a high demand digital marketing and PR agency, we’re seeing tremendous benefits from educating in-house marketing staff on the finer points of social media marketing.” He adds, “Offering both good and bad social media marketing examples along with strategy, tools, tactics and analytics can really empower companies to succeed.”

Now, I’ve served on panels with Lee. I know Lee. And that’s exactly the way Lee talks.

The first of the Social Media Smarts workshop series will be conducted in New York, December 4th and 5th, at the Microtek training facility in lower Manhattan. If you are in the nieghborhood, drop by and heckle Lee.

And remember: I’m taller. Actually, I was standing on my toes for this photo. Lee’s actually pretty tall, too.

While some sectors in the economy are struggling, 24/7 Real Media brings some much needed good news. They are the fastest growing top ten ad network in the six months ending October 2008, according to the comScore Media Metrix report.

24/7 grew by 36% and now reaches 135 million unique users. That’s 71% of U.S. internet users.

“We will continue to diversify our publisher network to provide advertisers with unmatched targeting and reach, to accomplish their specific program goals and experience increased ROI for every campaign,” said Ari Bluman, president of North American sales and operations for 24/7 Real Media, Inc. “As a result of our robust targeting options and tremendous reach, we have one of the highest performing networks available.”

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AOL’s ad network, Platform-A, is going on tour. The 5-city event begins in New York City on November 17th at the American Museum of Natural History. The next stop will be Atlanta on November 20.

The tour will break for the holidays before hitting Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in 2009.

“AOL has one of the largest, most diverse and most engaged audiences on the Web, and combined with Platform-A’s industry-leading technologies, we can offer advertisers a unique combination of scale, integrated branding, and advanced targeting capabilities to enable them to deliver their branding messages in an effective, engaging and highly efficient way,” said Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio. “At a time when companies make sure that every penny spent on advertising counts, AOL delivers quality content and engaged consumers and Platform-A connects marketers to this audience to drive superior results.”

Related Reading:
AOL’s Platform-A Collaborates with T-mobile for 2 Day, Billion Impression Ad Blitz
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New market research has found that blog readers are strongly influenced by blog content when it comes to purchase decisions across a number of categories, and that blogs play a key role in ushering readers to the point of an actual purchase. BuzzLogic, a social media analysis company and ad network, sponsored the market research and JupiterResearch, a Forrester research company, conducted the survey of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US.

Their Harnessing the Power of Blogs survey also found that blog readership has grown 300% over the past four years. The results also suggest that consumers who read blogs more than once per month — or frequent blog readers — use blogs as the top online navigation tool to discover other blog content, ranking higher than general Web search or blog search.

The new market research will be the focus of a free webinar, “Consumers and the Influence of Blogs: What it Means for Your Marketing Mix,” which will be held on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT. The free webinar will be moderated by Matt McGowan, vice president and publisher for Incisive Media’s digital marketing businesses, and will feature Barry Parr, Analyst at JupiterResearch, and Rob Crumpler, President and CEO of BuzzLogic.

Looking more closely at how blogs factor into consumer purchase decisions and the nature of blog influence on buying behavior, the survey found:
• Blogs influence purchases: 50% of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.
• Blogs sway more purchases among readers than social networks: More frequent blog readers say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions than content from social networking sites. Enid Burns of The ClickZ Network focused on this finding in her recent story about the survey, “Study: Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites.”
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3631303
• Niche focus ups influence factor: For those who have found blog content useful for product decisions, 56% said blogs with a niche focus and topical expertise were key sources.
• Blogs go beyond tech: Outside of technology-related purchases, for which 31% of readers say blogs are useful, other key categories include: media and entertainment (15%); games/toys and/or sporting goods (14%); travel (12%); automotive (11%); and health (10%).

According to the study, blogs factor in to critical stages of the purchase process, weighing most heavily at the actual moment of a purchase decision. When it comes to respondents who said they have trusted blog content for purchase decisions in the past, over half (52 percent) say blogs played a role in the critical moment they decided to move forward with a purchase.

Blog readers were also surveyed about the influence of blogs as it relates to the following steps of the purchase process:
• 21% decide on a product or service,
• 19% refine choices,
• 19% get support and answers,
• 17% discover products and services,
• 14% assure,
• 13% inspire a purchase
• 7% execute a purchase.

For frequent blog readers, ads on blogs are on par with sponsored search results. However, trust of blog advertising exceeds that of social networking site advertising. A quarter of these readers say they trust ads on a blog they read; paid search links also accounted for 25% of the responses, while 19% say they trust ads on social networking sites.

The study also suggests that ads on blogs spur a number of activities: 40% of blog readers have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; 50% of frequent blog readers say this is the case. The top activities include:
• 17% read product reviews online,
• 16% sought out more info on a product or service,
• 16% visited a manufacturer or retailer website.

JupiterResearch designed and fielded the survey in August 2008 to online consumers selected randomly from the NPD Group US online consumer panel. A total of 2,210 individuals responded. For more information on the survey’s methodology, go to JupiterResearch.

Now, blogs certainly aren’t considered the “newbies” of the social media scene – “granddaddies” is probably a more appropriate term. But that gives them an advantage from a marketing perspective – the medium has matured and moved from early adopter phase to the mainstream.

This may come as a surprise to some search engine marketers, but blog readers do not appear to rely as heavily on search as a means to find new blogs as consumers of traditional online media do. According to the new survey, one in five consumers who have read a blog in the past 12 months — or general blog readers — use blog links to discover new blogs. Further, the study suggests blogs are not consumed in isolation — 49% of blog readers and 71% of frequent readers read more than one blog per session. Other key findings include:
• Links more powerful than search: For frequent readers, links beat search as a navigation tool: 38 percent said blog links were the top tool for discovering new blog content as compared to 34 percent who voted for Web search.
• Links signal trust: For frequent readers, blog links appear to have similar impact as a trusted recommendation from a person (a response from 39 percent of survey participants).
• Blog search not yet mainstream: Blog search engines received the lowest ranking from respondents: 6 percent of general readers and 11 percent of frequent readers say they use these tools to discover new blogs.

If you are interested in getting more details about Harnessing the Power of Blogs, register for the free Webinar. Again, it will be held on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Search Engine Strategies Chicago starts in four weeks on Dec. 8, 2008. Since SES Chicago is the only SEM conference in the Midwest, it is expect to attract more than 2,000 attendees, or “delegates.”

But as Butch Cassidy frequently asked the Sundance Kid, “Who are those guys?”

In the past, there was anecdotal information about the quality of attendees who came to Search Engine Strategies Chicago. And as a frequent speaker, I would often ask for a show of hands to get a sense of the percentage of first time attendees and SES veterans.

But now, there is survey data that provides a clearer picture of the demographics of delegates from last year’s event. And I suspect it’s the kind of information that exhibitors and sponsors of the SES expo have been asking for:
• 87% of delegates are new to SES, 13% are alumni;
• 85% of delegates approve or recommend purchasing decisions;
• 52% of delegates have a high level of experience within search marketing;
• 36% of delegates are from a company of 100+ employees;
• Nearly 1,300 unique companies attended SES Chicago 2007, 27% of these companies sent two or more staff.

In addition, 41% of the attendees are in marketing or management; 27% are in web design or e-commerce; 23% are in corporate management or owners; and 9% are non-marketing professionals. And 57% approve or specify purchases, 28% make recommendations, and only 15% have no involvement in purchases.

That’s why you’ll see 40 sponsors and exhibitors at the Search Engine Strategies Expo. Savvy search engine marketers understand the value of quality attendance.

As Bill Muller, the VP Marketing for iProspect, has said, “SES is a terrific event series, one that we plan to be at in New York, San Jose, and Chicago.” Or as Ginny Redgate, VP Marketing for Hitwise, has said, “SES provides us great brand visibility within the search marketing community as well as quality leads. It is a great place for us to connect with our clients.”

I don’t think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid could have said it better.

Google is converting their Help Forums to a new system. The new features include:

• improved search results, including posts from current and new forums
• the ability to designate especially helpful forum members as “Top Contributors”
• a reputation and ranking system
• the ability for users, Top Contributors and Googlers to mark questions as answered
• easier access to Help Center content
• expanded user profiles that highlight your forum activity

Forums that have already been converted include:

• AdWords
• AdSense
• Android Market
• Google Apps
• Google Chrome
• Most of the Polish products

For a more detailed look, check out this vid:

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YouTube is adding search and 3 other features to embeddable videos. The search feature will appear at the end of videos that are embedded on other sites.

The other features are things you’ve seen if you visit YouTube’s site but were not previously available for the embeds:

• High-quality start images (thumbnails)
• Integrated video annotations
• Integrated closed captions

Google says 44% of their users watch videos embedded on third party sites.

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Scott Moore and Al Warms are leaving Yahoo, while Jeff Dossett is joining the Sunnyvale search engine. Dossett replaces Moore, who headed up Yahoo!’s media group. Al Warms headed up Yahoo News, Tech and Education, and came to Yahoo through the acquisition of Buzztracker.

“Jeff is one of the country’s most experienced online media executives, and I’m confident he is well-suited to lead Yahoo!’s audience business to even greater heights,” said Hilary Schneider, Yahoo! executive vice president. “His understanding of consumer needs and high-quality premium programming will help ensure that we continue with Yahoo!’s reputation of inspiring audiences and attracting marketer dollars.”

Moore and Warms join the mass exodus of senior level employees leaving Yahoo in the aftermath of a failed acquisition by Microsoft and in the midst of poor earnings, layoffs and a plummeting stock price.

Changes are coming to the way AdWords calculates its Quality Score and Ad Rank. The changes will be implemented in the coming weeks.

First up, Quality Score will no longer take ad position into account. The idea is that simply dishing out the dough for a higher position has nothing to do with the quality of the ad.

CORRECTION: Here’s what Google really said: “To calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it’s important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score.” Bloggers have been pointing out that Google has been doing this. When I get further clarification from Google, I’ll let you know! Stay tuned.

Next, Ad Rank is going to focus on quality for ads that appear on top of the search results. Ads must meet a “quality threshold” in order to appear in that prime real estate. It will be possible for a lower positioned ad to jump above a higher position ad in the sidebar ads to hang out in the box above the organic results if it meets the threshold but the higher positioned ads don’t.

Clearly, Google is making quality a key focus in AdWords. This may be an attempt to improve the program in the midst of a slowdown in growth for paid search. Or it could be an attempt to show that Google is more concerned about quality than price - and therefore advertisers need not be worried about a little thing like a search advertising deal with Yahoo.

What do you think about the focus on quality? Let us know in the comments.

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If you’re not familiar, CafePress is a site where you can purchase custom-designed apparel and gifts. There are many merchants selling their designs as well. Today, CafePress unveiled its new design, and it looks great.

But searching for a design you like can be a chore. That’s why I think CafePress should adopt an online ratings system to help the best designs be showcased first in their search results.

Yes, this can be abused, but it can also create a community, something that is currently only found in the CafePress forums.

CafePress competitor, Zazzle, which has experienced explosive growth in the past year despite higher prices and fewer products. What they do have is a 5 star rating system as well as the opportunity to leave comments on products. I think this helps customers better find what they’re looking for. If I had to take a guess, a customer would rather pay $5 for better design at Zazzle than a mediocre design at CafePress.

Don’t get me wrong, there are quality designs at CafePress, but finding them organically, like I said, is a chore.

Hopefully the next design update CafePress unveils is a techie-one that improves search.

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