Category Archives: SEM News

Bing It On – Microsoft Throws Down the Gloves

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Bing It On

Bing It On: Win, Lose, or Draw?

We’re not sure if you’ve heard of the latest marketing campaign by Microsoft or not but they have recently released “The Bing Challenge.” It’s also known by the catchphrase “Bing It On.”

Regardless of what you call it, it’s pretty straightforward and here at SageRock, we’ve decided to reward you for participating. (No, neither company is paying us to do this.)

The SageRock “Bing It On” Contest

Here’s the deal:

Bing wants you to use their search engine instead of using Google (duh), and is proposing to take it on one search at a time. You put in a search term, and Bing shows you two separate results: one from Google, one from Bing. You then are asked to choose which one you liked the best. The catch? You aren’t told which is which until the very end.

Want to Participate in the SageRock Contest?

Don’t worry, it’s very simple.  You are going to take the Bing Challenge with your own searches, but based around our suggestions. Why? For science! (or something) After you complete the Bing It On Challenge, take a screenshot of your final screen and send it to: bingiton@sagerock.com
The winner (chosen at random) will get either a Google or a Bing Coffee Mug, depending on their results*

Here’s the Step by Step Guide:

  1. Visit the Bing-It-On Challenge
  2. Enter your 5 Searches in this Order
      1. Your First and Last Name
      2. Name a Smell
      3. Any Search Engine
      4. Name of a Porn Star or an Illegal Drug
      5. Local Restaurant and city (example: Pizzeria Uno, Chicago)
  3. Take a screenshot of your Bing It On results:

    SageRock Bing Challenge

  4. Email the screenshot of your results to: bingiton@sagerock.com

We will compile all entries into a blog post giving the results at the end of March. We will also give the winner(chosen at random) either a Google or a Bing coffee mug depending on what their results were.

Best of luck to all of you!

 

*The Winner will be chosen at random but we will combine all entries into a future Blog post to showcase the outcome and determine who the winner really is!

 

 

A great culmination of Internet stats

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This article at Search Engine Land is a cornucopia of Internet stat goodness: How Search & Social Will Hit The Fast Forward Button In 2013

It’s clearly a culmination of tons of research.

These kinds of stats are really useful when making a pitch to a client or boss.

These are the latest numbers in many different areas of Internet marketing.

I recommend bookmarking it and having it handy for that next pitch to a suspicious prospect.

Alison Krejny – The Latest Addition to Team Awesome at SageRock

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Here’s a video I just did with Alison Krejny.

She is our most recent addition to our team. She has 5 years experience in the world of paid search. She has a really great background in managing big and small paid search accounts.

We are super excited to have her here at SageRock.

Here’s our interview:

Hey Politicians: Google wants you to get your ass in gear too!

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I’m not the only one on the planet telling politicians they are missing the boat by not promoting their campaigns online.

Yesterday I wrote 10 Tips to Help Politicians Get on the Social Media Boat.

It’s not that I love all your negative ads and misleading “facts.”

It’s just becoming pathetic at this point in the game that you aren’t figuring out how to reach me (a 40 year old who votes in every election).

Here’s a news flash:

  • I laugh at the guy at the mall who is trying to sell me a newspaper subscription. Newspapers are bad for the environment and are literally yesterday’s news.
  • I have no antenna on my tv. Nor do I subscribe to cable or satellite. All my tv comes to me via the Internet (Netflix and Youtube).
  • I hate terrestrial radio (other than WZIP FM 88.1 the University of Akron station). Your morning zoos are not freakin’ funny! And your commercial breaks are too long. I listen to the radio on Pandora and Spotify.
  • I also don’t have a phone that you know about. I never pick up a number that I’m not familiar with.

So you might see here that I’ve pretty much shut down every channel of marketing you use.

And if you say that I’m the only one like this, I’ll have to reach directly through this screen and shake your naive little shoulders. The Internet is better media and more and more people are figuring that out. 

So Google has put together a much more politically correct tool (than what you are reading here) to help politicians figure out this “new” media. (Incidentally, by the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages, by August 2008 Facebook had a 100 million users and Twitter had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007… so yeah this stuff has only been around for about a decade. Totally new.)

Google’s promotion is called Four Screens to Victory.

The four screens are:

  • Television
  • Mobile Devices
  • Tablets
  • Personal Computers

From Mashable:

Google to Political Campaigns: Get Online, Now [INFOGRAPHIC]

Google has stressed the need for politicians to pay attention to the web and mobile devices, lest their message is lost given the increasing number of people who pay little attention to television in favor of personal computers and mobile devices.

That’s me and my tech savvy brethren, politicians. 

Google put together a sweet infographic

Four Screens To Victory

You can click the image to see the full version over at Mashable.

But some of the stats here are really important to understand:

1. More than 80% of eligible voters are online.
2. Similarly, 83% of mobile phone owners are registered voters.
3. One out of every 3 likely voters in November say that they didn’t watch television in the past week.
4. Voters are spending more media time on their mobile devices than with newspapers & magazines combined.

This isn’t a fad, folks. This isn’t some sort of rogue, fringe group of freaks in the corner that you can ignore.

83% of mobile phone owners are registered voters.

You don’t buy an iPhone, spend $100/month for service and then go watch TV, read a newspaper or listen to FM radio. You use your iPhone!

I know this is hurting your brain. Anything new always does. But politics is life or death war. There is one winner and a bunch of losers. You don’t want to be in the “bunch of losers” pile.

So force yourself to get your ass online and start spamming me with your incessant messages. (And no. Email doesn’t count. I don’t read those any more.)

You can figure this out. You can do this!

Man. I must be in a snarky mood this morning.

Smart & Head Strong. How to live a Marissa Mayer inspired life

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I’ve seen countless smart people think themselves out of business (before they ever started).

I’ve seen untold head strong people start some of the worst businesses you can possibly imagine.

The people that are successful entrepreneurs, artists, and revolutionaries are the ones that think through a plan up to a point and then plow into it like a tornado into a trailer park.

Marissa Mayer comes to mind today.

Here’s a woman that “shut down a good portion of San Francisco in order to install a massive Dale Chihuly glass sculpture in her home.”

She is also #20 employee at Google. And today she is CEO of Yahoo.

There isn’t a piece a paper long enough to list all the reasons why she shouldn’t take the CEO job at Yahoo.

Someone wrote on Twitter that she was able to cause more buzz at Yahoo in 5 minutes than anything Yahoo could do in 5 years.

But she’s both smart and head strong.

This is what you call a calculated risk.

Marissa is awesome. She’s the reason we have the clean layout at Google.com. There are endless factions trying to make their way onto that page. She has fought them off for years.

But Yahoo is a wreck. They are conservative, shortsighted and anti-innovative. I put her chances of turning Yahoo around at about 35%. That’s a ship who’s momentum is just down, down, down.

I guarantee she knows that.

But she’s going to plow into the company like a house on fire.

There comes a time in your life (many times, actually) where you think through something for a while. You make a pros and cons list. And then you just decide. Just do it. (or don’t)

You have to turn the “smart” part of you off as you jump off the cliff. It’s never smart to take a risk. The bigger the risk, the less smart it is.

But that’s where greatness steps in.

Think:


Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi


Martin Luther King, Jr


Jesus

Simply put: Those were some crazy motherfuckers. I guarantee they were smart. But they all got their asses killed on the way to the mountain top.

Smart and head strong.

Marissa Mayer is starting her own journey up the mountain. She probably won’t literally die on the way up. But she’s clearly putting her career at risk.

Think:


Katie Couric

You have roughly about 30 quality years in your life where you must make a decision:

Do you try climbing the mountain? Or do you sit in the valley?

Sitting in the valley thinking about all the reasons you shouldn’t climb the mountain is a choice. It is the life you lead. If you like it in the valley then fine. If you gaze at the mountain longingly wondering what’s up there… and never go. Well, let me ask you this: Would you rather be Katie Couric who failed at being the first woman news anchor? Or would you prefer to be the millions of other people who quietly wonder what it would be like to be a news reporter? Which is more tragic?

It’s your life.

But if you want to be like the people in this article, here’s the recipe for living a Marissa Mayer inspired life:

  1. Think it through for a while. (a day, maybe two)
  2. Talk to some (positive) friends.
  3. I’m serious about this one… run like hell away from people that will tell you what a major mistake you are making. You know who they are in your life. Don’t ask them their opinion unless you want to be talked out of your dreams.
  4. Take 2 to 3 days where you don’t think about it.
  5. On day three ask yourself: “Should I do it?”
  6. If you instinctively say yes… get your ass out there and never look back. Just do it. 
  7. Don’t question your decision for at least 6 months.

Marissa Mayer is amazingly inspiring to me. Am I living the life I most want to live? It’s a question she has inspired me to ask. Thank you for taking this risk Marissa.

Oh… and now I don’t hate Yahoo so much any more. Good luck. I hope you can bring back some of the values Yahoo has always had. You can read them here:

Yahoo – What we value

And please don’t forget what you don’t value:

Yahoo – What we don’t value