The search engines are focusing more on high quality and relevant links that have contextual placements (links that occur within the content of the page vs on a side bar or footer). All of these developments lead me to believe that IF you are going to pay for links, I would look hard at using one of the blog link services. The important things to ask for and receive with these paid link campaigns are:
1) Make sure the blogs have some value - request blogs with Google page rank no lower than 2
(more…)

Consumer Generated Media is any content created by visitors who are NOT marketing folks for a site, product or service. Blogs are the most recent large example, but it extends to user reviews, bulletin boards, forums, chat, Messenger clients, social networks, podcasting, interpersonal emails, etc. CGM is both the most open form of online communication and the form of communication most feared by company marketing strategists and PR mavens. If the CGM is unfiltered and informative (positive or negative) it can drastically influence someones opinion to buy or not buy a product or engage with a service.

(more…)

Starting up this blog has been a lot more work than I thought it would be. There are lots of resources for researching blogs and now there are lots of options. Blogs are in that crazy early growth stage that is a lot of fun. Lots of new features, software providers, people writing about it (like me), people reading about it (like you) and press coverage. If you want to publish a blog, good for you. Figure out why you want to do it and how you want it to be. I had some specific things in mind (some would call it requirements - ugh) like:
1) I wanted it to be hosted on the branddigital.net domain
(more…)