Last night Netenberg updated Open-Realty and Soholaunch Pro Edition…

- Open-Realty: 2.3.6 -> 2.4.0
- Soholaunch Pro Edition: 4.9 r55 -> 4.9.1 r10If you using these software’s I suggest you upgrade.

Another cartoon created by creative genius  Matthew Schmoll. 
If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

Welcome to a new feature here on the official BlueFur blog. A big part of the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon is that we all contribute to the internet experience of others, and as such, we were all named Time Magazine’s person of the year for 2006. In many ways, the things that people write in their personal blogs are just as important and influential as any newscast on CNN, just as noteworthy as what you read in the New York Times. As such, it’s imperative to keep your ear to the ground and listen in on what the general blogging public.

Well, one of the major events sweeping across North America (it kicked off on April 10th in Tampa, Florida and will conclude on June 21st in Atlanta, Georgia) is the AMD Microsoft Tech Tour 2007. A whole crew of marketing geeks from both AMD and Microsoft are traveling through the United States and Canada, educating the people in the industry about the different products and services that they offer, as well as how they can best sell it to their customers. The folks that attend these events include system builders, retail store owners, and other people in the industry. Yes, bloggers too.

The tour stopped in Vancouver, Canada this past Tuesday and the bloggers were there in full force. Michael Kwan (that’s me), Stephen Fung, and John Chow were among those in attendance. There were several booths from manufacturers like VisionTek, Asus, and Gigabyte, as well as several PowerPoint presentations selling us on Windows Vista, ATi graphics cards, and hot new quad-core processors from AMD. Check out those three links for more info surrounding the tour.

One of the greatest challenges that a new (or existing) business can face is building some buzz, regardless of what kind of product or service you offer. Realistically, Google doesn’t really do anything all that different from Ask Jeeves or Infoseek, but it doesn’t take a genius to see how much more successful Google has been. Most of us don’t have a budget quite as big as Google, so how can you best spend your marketing money to maximize the benefit?

Recently, a client of mine — 1234Pens.com — teamed up with John Chow dot Com to give away a Nintendo Wii. There were several aspects to this that led to its resounding success for the promotional pens company.

• A Prize That People Want: The Nintendo Wii has been much more sought after than the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, largely because it appeals to everyone, whether they’re a traditional gamer or not. Mario fans want one, and even grandpa can play some bowling in Wii Sports. Massive appeal for the masses.
• A Large, Targeted Audience: If 1234 Pens only advertised this contest on their own website, it would basically defeat the purpose. The whole point was to drive search engine traffic to their site, so why tell people who are already there that you exist. This is where the partnership with a huge blog like John Chow’s comes into play. With thousands of unique visitors a day, John Chow dot Com has a pretty far-reaching audience.
• The Power of Anchor Text: Driving search engine traffic to a website is key to its success, whether it’s the website itself that makes money or the service/product behind it. What would be the key word that you’d want associated with your business that people would actually search for? 1234 Pens went with “promotional pens” and it worked like a charm. Before the contest started, their site was buried on the 3rd or 4th page of Google search engine results for that term. Today, they’re listed within the top three, depending on the data center.
• Viral Marketing Builds Buzz: An integral part of entering the contest was telling other people about the contest. To enter, you had to link to the official contest blog post on John Chow dot Com. This opened up the give-away a whole new set of readers each time a new person entered.

In the end, it cost 1234 Pens a touch over $300 (after taxes and shipping) to the run the contest. Given that they are now on the first page of Google search engine results for the term “promotional pens”, it’s pretty safe to say that they have already made back their investment and then some. Not every contest will be as successful as this one, but it gives you a great indication of what is possible.

If you’re out to monetize your WordPress blog, one of the best plug-ins you will ever encounter is Adsense Deluxe. In a nutshell, this plug-in streamlines the whole Google Adsense procedure. Instead of going into each individual post and having to paste in that messy Adsense code that you pull from Google, you can simply type in the call tag <–adsense–>. What’s more, you can put in all sorts of different Adsense codes, calling them up individually based on the name you give it. For example, you might call up the 468×60 banner by typing <–adsense#468–>.

But why stop there?

Something that I have done with my own blog is to include the “wrap” coding in Adsense Deluxe. Most Adsense gurus will tell you that the in-line 300 box is the generally the most lucrative ad placement, but it can be a bit of a pain to go through the process of right (or left) aligning the ad box in each post. So, when you’re setting up Adsense Deluxe, you can make it so that the <–adsense–> tag not only brings up the ad code served up by Google, but also the “wrap” coding: e.g., <div style=”float: right; margin: 3px;”>

And don’t forget to include </div> to close the tag!

Today I received a notice that Google will be coming to town in July. They are holding a seminar to help you get the most out of your AdWords. Those who sign-up early will receive a $50 credit to spend on AdWords advertising after the Seminar.

The seminar is a day-long event, presented in two four-hour sessions:

Morning Session (beginner or intermediate topics):

You can sign up here to attend this event.