Google obviously does not want to be in the search engine marketing business. This would create a constant conflict of interest inside Google and the company would hardly be able to keep up any appearance of objectivity.

As we reported in June, Google already rebranded the affiliate network side of Performics as the Google Affiliate Network. At that time, we noticed that this rebranding was only done half-heartedly, as Google basically only put a new store-front on the old Performics Affiliate Network. By now, the user interface has seen a refresh that is more in line with Google's regular properties.

For participating in the discussion, Scott you've won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.

Great post.

One of the questions I find most fascinating is how marketing will evolve to take advantage of the semantic web, whether it's in consumer or B2B plays. I think this is more than a linear extension of how marketers have been optimizing the web today, but something qualitatively different. I suggest that SEO + Semantic Web = SEO++ (after all, it is sort of an object-oriented paradigm shift).

Here are 7 possible missions for "semantic marketing":

1. Marketing becomes the champion of generating the underlying data.
2. Marketing views categorization, metadata, RDF graphs, relevant microformats, etc., as a new kind of market positioning and placement -- "semantic branding", if you will.
3. Marketing takes a much broader view of distribution and promotion of its semantic web data in search engines and vertical networks (SEO++), including the sponsorship or creation of new niche semantic networks.
4. Marketing comes up with new ways to incentivize the conversion of semantic web interactions in real business objectives.
5. Marketing will have a real challenge with tracking and attributing distributed data in the semantic web to measure its impact -- from multi-touch marketing to micro-touch marketing. Hard problem but entrepreneurial ingenuity will prevail.
6. Marketing will want to leverage other people's data in their own value-add mash-ups (interesting "joint venture" semantic data partnerships), as well as for internal-only apps focused on market research and competitive intelligence.
7. Marketing will need to be concerned with brand protection in the semantic web: quality control to watch for bad data, conflicting data, competitive misuse, etc.

If you're interested, http://www.chiefmartec.com/2008/03/marketing-in-th.html is the full post. Would love feedback from other marketers and semantic web afficionados.

Iskold's idea provides a pretty good way to visualize how information flows on Twitter. With that in mind, it is easy to see why the most successful marketing done via Twitter is of the "push" variety. Bloggers do this a lot when we tweet about posts we've just published. The hope is that the link will spread virally through the hubs and reach as many listeners as possible.

The key to successful push marketing on Twitter is to attract the right followers (people who have a lot of followers of their own and will retweet your message), and to make sure you don't do it too often. Unless, like the most popular person Twitter, your account is set up specifically for push marketing.

Twittermethis adds a layer of interactivity to push marketing that takes the idea to a new level. By including a call for response with his push marketing message, Kukral has created the building blocks for a potential community. It is easy to see how this type of push marketing could be big on a Twitter. Could this be a possible source of revenue for Twitter? Or could a smart marketing firm perhaps start selling clients on push campaigns via the service?

Even though Kukral says he has no expectations of making money on Twittermethis, there certainly is a potential to do so if he can grow his community large enough. How about sponsored questions, for example? That could be done subtley (i.e., "In what year was Tide Bleach introduced?") without harming the integrity of the game. Very clever indeed.

HubSpot used the new submission form on Jobwire, our site tracking new hires, to tell us about the move this morning.

The company says that creative professionals like the service because it can handle large files, is compatible with 400 different file formats and doesn't require software to be installed. There's also a mobile version, including for iPhone. The system is most likely to be used as a replacement to email or FTP, given that its main benefit is being able to send and collaborate around large media files.

MuseWorx has a free, entry-level version, a digital asset management tool with 100 MB of storage. It also has a partner network, through which it distributes the product. Museworx runs on Windows, Mac and Linux - the only other technical requirement is Adobe Flash 9.

Our Take

Essentially MuseWorx is an asset management system for creative professionals. We're not so impressed with the term "marketing OS", which seems fairly meaningless. You could argue that using the term "cloud computing" is also nebulous, although founder David Fritsche makes a good case for it in his blog Cloud Computing for Marketing.

MuseWorx claims to be "the first marketing automation system to leverage cloud computing" and in October it reported having more than 250,000 users. So whatever you think of the marketing claims for the product, it seems to be successful so far. Tell us what you think in the comments.

Enterprise Marketing Management and Automation Tools

Aprimo Marketing Studio, SAS On Demand and Unica On Demand are some of the market leaders in Web-based marketing management and automation for enterprises. Unica was recently acquired by IBM, possibly to integrate it with some of its e-commerce properties like Sterling Commerce and WebSphere. Logistics software company CDC also offers a Web-based marketing automation tool.

SMB Marketing Tools

SMBs needing a streamlined solution for both logistics and marketing automation should take a look at Netsuite. Other Web-based marketing automation tools for SMBs include Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. If the marketing automation tools built into the solutions above don't cut it for you, Pardot is a marketing automation application that can integrate with CRM solutions like Salesforce.com and Netsuite.

If you just need a Web-based tool with limited automation features for dealing with e-mail marketing campaigns, take a look at both AWeber and Mail Chimp. AWeber also supports some limited social media engagement in the form of sending Facebook and Twitter announcements.

Social Media Marketing Management

For those going beyond e-mail, several tools have emerged for managing social media marketing campaigns. KickApps offers a social media management tool that includes a full content management system, so that you can tightly integrate your entire wWb strategy - from your own site to Facebook - through one tool. It also integrates with other CMSs and WebSphere.

Jive Software offers a market-leading social media engagement solution, and WildFire is quite popular as well.

Website Localization

If you want to have your site available in multiple languages, automatic translation tools aren't going to cut it. You're going to need to hire professional translators and website localizers.

However, if you really need to have a site translated but can't pay for it, and you're fluent enough in another language that you could translate someone else's website, you can check out Free Localization. It's a translation exchange site - you volunteer some time translating a site, someone else translates your site.

For more information on Web localization:

Ten Tips for Website Localization

About.com's localization site

Photo by jaylopez

Through short videos from some of the top industry minds including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lauder Professor at The Wharton School Jerry Wind and AAAA CEO Nancy Hill, the group hopes to challenge marketers to take risks and create better campaigns. For now, the site comes up short as the videos appear to answer questions in a very general manner with few specifics in terms of tactics and strategy. The most promising component of the site appears to be the "Free Tools" section with a list of resources including links to a website optimizer, search insights and 3rd party trends data from Facebook and Twitter. Nevertheless, as of this review, all of those links are dead. The first rule of marketing: test your product.

While this is a good site to get inspiration, social media marketers and PR pros who are looking for new strategies and specifics might be better off visiting Building43, PR 2.0 or asking questions through LinkedIn's online groups. Other great resources include the Social Media Club events and social marketing-related Meetups.

Foursquare has hardly been squashed. The startup ended 2010 with over 380 million check-ins and now boasts over 6 million users. But a new survey from MerchantCircle suggests that while users may be flocking to Foursquare, businesses' marketing dollars are going elsewhere.

Respondents to the latest survey indicate that 32% are using Facebook Places to promote their businesses, with 12% planning to do so in the coming months. That compares to 8.7% who use Foursquare, with 7.6% planning to add it to their marketing repertoire soon.

Behind Foursquare in the survey is Groupon, with 6.6% of local merchants saying they'd offered a "daily deal." But 13% of those surveyed say they plan to do so, an indication that there is a demand for group-buying opportunities.

Interestingly, 14.3% of respondents said they'd never heard of Groupon, while 27.6% said they'd never heard of Foursquare; 26.9% said they'd never heard of Groupon's competitor Living Social and 11% said they'd never heard of Facebook Places. Before you draw any conclusions about Super Bowl ads, the survey ran from Jan. 22 through Feb. 3, narrowly missing the Groupon advertising gaffe.

According to the survey, about 72% of local businesses say they'll spend less than $5,000 a year on these marketing efforts, with 34% spending less than $1,000.

But give marketing - especially online marketing - its due. The same thing has happened with marketing that happened with video, audio and many other fields: tools that were priced far out of our reach only a few years ago are suddenly cheap (or even free) and readily available.

But there's a cautionary note to sound here. Case in point: if you're old enough to remember the advent of desktop publishing, then 1) I hope you can read this through your bifocals, and 2) you'll also remember the eyeball-searing newsletters and posters pumped out by folks who could read the PageMaker manual but didn't have a clue about design. (Sixty different typefaces on one page! Cool!)

The point is that a tool might be easy to use, but it isn't necessarily easy to use well. And reading even a few books about, say, analytics - I'm a fan of Avinash Kaushik's, for example - will put you head and shoulders above most of the rest of us.

And once you know how to use a tool well, you'll be in a much better position to use it (or when not to) to achieve the things that really matter to you, whether it's valuable business conversions or meaningful personal connections.

More Noise to Signal.

IMGuest is a premium marketing tool launched three days ago that enables marketing and guest relations staff to use the social graph to interact with hotel guests at check-in. From that moment on, staff can push out discounts and other offers to them instantaneously based on their interests.

The data reflect the interests, histories and demographics that marketing staff can leverage to make the physical experience at the hotel more gratifying. Instead of having guests search out their own next actions, the actions are delivered to them as cues in emails.

Mendolovich says the Tel Aviv-based company started by running a pilot with eight international hotels that he could not mention because of confidentiality agreements. The hotels are global.

We got a sneak peek into how this social graph for hotel managers works.

Essentially, hotel staff log into IMGuest through the portal and then monitor guests who check-in to the social graph. The interface shows all their profiles, and then you can dig down deeper to get metadata about those individuals.

Staff can post to the guests marketing offers for things like a jazz night, a flash sale on free drinks, or a spa discount, throughout the chain or specifically to guests at the particular hotel, and it will go directly to the people who are logged in as guests at that moment. Staff can filter through demographic data like age, gender, origin, or interests.

This premium account is available only to hotels and the price is about $50 per hotel, per month. There is a free version available to anyone.

Email Marketing a Top Priority

Those companies that are seeing the current downturn as a chance to expand and that are planning to spend more on their online efforts this year, say that they will focus their investments on search (80%), email (65%), and social marketing (60%). According to this report, these businesses see email as one of the most important means to communicate with their customers and most plan to use it to inform customers of new product launches, promotions, and to get customer feedback. 90% of all respondents listed a focus on email marketing as a top priority.

Companies Won't Scale Back Social Media Campaigns

Interestingly, the study also found that those companies that are growing faster than expected during this downturn are also more likely to embrace social media. Even those companies that are planning to scale back their online operations this year still plan to experiment with social media campaigns.

Imaged used courtesy of Flickr user jakerome.

• Session 1: Social Media Marketing Fundamentals
• Session 2: Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
• Session 3: Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
• Session 4: A Marketer‚Äôs Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
• Session 5: Keynote Q & A with Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
• Session 6: Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
• Session 7: Evangelist - The Marketer‚Äôs Role in SMM
• Session 8: Micro Communities
• Session 9: Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and Answer Sharing
• Session 10: Final Session - Wikipedia Clinic

Holland-based CoffeeCompany is starting to market their menu items via their Wi-Fi networks. If you head to any of their coffee shops don't be surprised to see networks with names such as 'OrderAnotherCoffeeAlready' or 'TodaysSpecialExpresso1.60Euro'. With the help of THEY, CoffeeCompany is promoting their specials of the day and more, while humorously guilt tripping patrons accessing their Wi-Fi networks to grab another cup of coffee. Did anyone suggest this to Starbucks yet?

Will it Increase Business?

There haven't been any reports of an increase in business, but we think the idea is great! Would it tempt us to buy another cup of joe? Once we could control our laughter at the creative network names we'd be more than happy to. While it won't stop most from free-loading, we think CoffeeCompany might be on to something with this marketing technique. What creative network names would you use to market your products or services via a Wi-Fi network?

Image courtesy of Adrants

This is a step in a direction that might make advertisers, brand managers and marketing people feel a little uneasy, because it means they may have to start thinking deeply for their brand rather than just counting hits.

Facebook pages are now like a revolving door. That means they allow many more people to come into the page and write on it, creating a catalyst for building a brand culture on the social networking site.

People can come in and leave a comment and can never be seen again. But the move could mean greater things for marketing, and one social media manager told us that the emphasis on "Likes" has really hampered proper brand interaction and conversation on the web.

"If a social media manager is using likes to measure the impact of a Facebook page or brand, they are measuring the wrong thing," says Stuart Tracte, Social Media Strategist at Definition 6. "They should be measuring conversions. How is Facebook impacting you overall business goals? THAT'S what I want to know."

We had already reported that just over 41% of people who Like a brand drop that brand page by "disliking" it after any type of marketing or advertising campaign ends. Facebook seems to be putting a crimp in the assumption that sites like Facebook make it easier to run marketing campaigns because they are social and that numbers alone actually mean something.

They do not. Semantics mean something, obviously.

Facebooking for, and engaging with, a brand is now about meaning and resolving issues. It's about quality of posts, tone and managing the creativity of the brand's image and its engagement style.

"A comment requires some level of thought and engagement. Measuring likes is a simple way to measure potential reach, but means very little when it comes to the bottom line of any brand," says Tracte.

Only 28.7% were influenced by social media, which makes sense given the fact that you are what you're more likely to be what you "like" on Facebook, not "what your friends like."

When it comes to what types of media influence purchases of apparel/clothing and grocery, social media still comes in dead last not only for Gen Y's, but for Gen X's and Boomers, too.

New research from Ericsson echoes the fact that while teens today are definitely digital natives, they still prefer face-to-face communication over digital means like texting and Facebook.