You may disagree  – you may think to yourself: “I have things to say and people will want to read them”.  If that’s you, sorry, move along sir or madam, I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to the other reader who doesn’t have things to say, but a consultant / friend / neighbor told them they should start a blog and post things because it will help their business.

If you are considering blogging because you’ve either been told or believe that it will help your search rankings, it will help personalize your business or drive traffic to your site.  I’m telling you that you don’t need a blog.

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Please stop using Internet Explorer 6.  It came out in 2004, is riddled with bugs and forces developers that want to use cool tools like MooTools write CSS and HTML hacks that make me cringe.

I understand you are fearful of change.  I get it.  Don't upgrade to Office 2007.  Doesn't bother me at all. Don't upgrade to Vista.  Heck that OS compelled me to switch to a Mac. I also understand that your IT support staff is not prepared for the onslaught of calls due to the ribbon replacing menus in Office 07. 

But the whole goal of Internet Explorer 7 was to be more secure (i.e. less for you to worry about).  Especially now that it's been out for 2 years.  Also, it's a browser, so it won't crash your network or cause a flood of calls to your IT support center.

In conclusion, this is my plea to you corporate America, to do what's best for web developers everywhere and upgrade to IE7 already.  The world of tab pages and standards based CSS support awaits you.

Sincerely,

Brian Schwartz

So today I’m listening to Pandora again and I see the ad below, confirming what I guessed at in a previous post – Pandora is geographically targeting ads to users.

This banner ad is specifically for an open house at the University on November 21. This Open House is in St. Louis.

The landing page is also well-done because it’s well designed and has the requisite social media sharing toolbar.  Although it should probably list the address of the open house on the landing page somewhere.

A few years ago I managed a similar campaign for another college in St. Louis, and although those campaigns were successful at driving traffic from direct mail, organic searches and pay-per-click advertising , it
would have been nice to use other tools like this.

Well done Fontbonne and well done Pandora.

Hello.  As I type this I’m watching the end of the final round of this year’s Masters (somewhat anti-climatic this year, but I digress), and I keep seeing ads for IBM where instead of giving us a microsite to go to or a URL, they provide us with search terms.  The ad that I just saw said “search: IBM go green“.

I have no reason to follow this call-to-action, as I have no need to use IBM’s server products, but it stood out to me.  Why use search engine results in TV advertising when they are so subject to change or competitor influence?

Last year some time, Pontiac was running TV advertisements with donuts for local markets, where the call to action for St. Louis, MO was “google pontiac st. louis”.  Chris Hammond, a former co-worker of mine, thought it would be funny to try to take over the top spot for this term.  He did for a short time (I think, Chris if you read this jump in with what position you got up to).

Regardless of who it is: WHY DO THIS???

Why not a microsite, (go to pontiacstlouis.com, go to ibmgogreen.com, etc.) where you can control the results?  Any SEO guru, competitor with an agenda or disgruntled former employee could throw up a site or blog post, an expensive PPC ad or something similar to get on the top page of google that could disrupt your best efforts for this TV ad.

Also, why make a consumer choose between 10 results (example: Pontiac St. Louis) when you can control the message with one?

Microsite’s are great for reaching specific audiences with specific messaging, but search engine algorithms are subject to change.

If someone has a reason I’m missing, please let me know.  Until then, I’m rejecting this method in favor of microsites for my clients.