centre{source}

Here is a graph* with data from Forrester Research on the participation of US online users.

The Social Revolution is here to stay. All marketers must learn to accept the challenges by customer driven participation by proactively focusing on the relationships. The tools are available to engage the customer’s voice. Beyond the story boards, focus groups, and internal discussions are the critics and influencers that for the most part, beyond the rants, do offer valid constructive criticism.

Last month at BarCamp Nashville, John Ellis spoke about Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertisers.

One of his Seven Habits was to avoid the top spot in a Search Engine Marketing campaign.

The number-one position usually leads to a poor return on investment, and that can often be true of the second and third positions as well. The traffic coming from the top positions are not buyers; they are just researchers. Serious buyers will go to the third, fourth and fifth positions. When consumers are ready to buy, they will come back.

I’m a big fan of analogies and metaphors to help clarify a concept or bring understanding to technical subjects such as search engine optimization.

Dave Zuis uses “Physical Fitness” as a metaphor in his article at SearchEngineJournal – SEO & Physical Fitness Metaphors

I found Everett’s comment to be absolutely spot on:

I am a firm believer that companies who are SERIOUS (I’m talking over 100 k per year serious) about their search engine optimization efforts need to either get an in-house SEO, an embedded consultant or both. Having some guy on the other side of the country with dozens of other clients send you a report that says “Do this, this and this…” without actually DOING any of the “doing” is like joining one of those online personal trainer websites where you pay someone to send you an exercise routine via email.

What is a manifesto?

Traditionally defined as: A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature….

At Change This they define the word manifesto as one of many PDF files on their site that’s an argument, a reasoned, rational call to action, supported by logic and facts.

So who is Change This?

Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong built ChangeThis in the summer of 2004. The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin.

I’m sure that many of you have already seen this video courtesy of the Onion, but there is always the possibility for a Web Crash.

Sidenote: It pays to backup your data.

In case you missed it, Engadget documented a full SIM unlock of the iPhone with a small piece of software last Friday. Essentially, with the software solution by iPhonesSimFree, one can use their iPhone on any mobile carrier worldwide on a 2G GSM network.

Sending shock ways though the hallways of AT&T, many iPhone users are shaking their heads “YES!” while the mobile carrier’s legal team is shouting “NOOO!” It will be interesting to see what Apple’s response will be toward blocking the hack.

Don’t be surprised to see Apple offering an unlocked version of the iPhone for *gasp* $799.00 or more.

BarCamp Nashville is still fresh in the minds of those who attended the new media “unconference” on August 18, 2007.

Here is a five-minute highlight reel produced by StudioNow. While five minutes doesn’t even cover what transpired over twelve hours, ask anyone who attended. Most likely, one will hear the passion from the various takeaways from the event. Whether you’re a Mac or PC guy, into Search Engine Marketing, great web design, programming, blogging or some form of interactive media, the consensus is that BarCamp Nashville was the stick that stirred the pool of talent in Nashville’s technology and media community.

In marketing, we obsess over understanding people and how they think. Marketing campaigns are created to nudge the populace into a call to action. Seth Godin offers up a great starting point of what people want.

I can be very forgiving over a less than stellar restaurant meal, if the server was apologetic and reasonably accomodating. Would I go back to the same restaurant? – most likely yes. I invite you to add your own.

–

Seth’s list of what people want:

The same thing everyone else is having, but different.

It is a given assumption that Al Gore invented the Internet. A recent conversation came up as to who was “the world’s first blogger.” Some say it was Camille or Dave. Hopefully that burning debate will be put to rest now that weBloggers are about to get their very own, ground breaking, inaugural convention: the BlogWorld Expo where else but in Las Vegas!

VivaLaBlog!

According to their site, BlogWorld is “the first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media. In addition to the only industry-wide exhibition, BlogWorld will feature the largest blogging conference in the world including more than 50 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes from iconic personalities on the leading-edge of online technology and internet-savvy business.”

Blogging Statistics from the Blog World site:

Learning about effective Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing is a long arduous journey. At times, it’s as fun as manually reading a dictionary searching for effective keywords or looking for a phone number in a stack of papers. Where does one start?

The temptation is to apply quick fix shortcuts. Understanding the foundational basics of SEM and SEM best practices coupled with a long term strategy will prevent unmet expectations.

Who doesn’t want to be Number 1 on Google?