Archives for July 2010

Excellent BBQ, strong entrepreneurial spirit, a booming technology industry and green initiatives — Houston, Texas is the new business hot spot. The city attracts a variety of large corporations from around the world as well as graduates from the country’s most elite colleges. But, as with most things that are good, there’s unfortunately a bad side.

Just when I thought the Geico commercials were tapering off, we have been hit with yet another ingenious work of comedic art. I have critiqued a few of their commercials, which I adore, though I think this one takes the cake.

Social media marketing has entered the forefront of business advertising in recent years and shows no signs of letting up. Companies are scrambling to hire social media consultants because they realize its true potential, though many are not familiar with the medium and what goes into creating a successful social media campaign.

The art of building backlinks is nothing new to SEO experts around the world, and successful SEO campaigns have been proven to rake in millions of online dollars. But, there’s another side to backlinks: They provide a secretive, covert stream of information on the person or company that’s building the links. Not just a snippet of info, I mean a lot.

Tonight I have decided to go on a rant about advertising agency rankings and how they are — almost always — calculated based on revenue not actual performance. This is a failure of grandeur proportions, especially since most ad agencies are shifting to interactive marketing mediums (banner ads, social media, SEO, etc.) and one’s ability to perform in the digital arena is all that really matters in this day and age.

As the world progresses into an e-centric mass, more and more businesses are recognizing the power of the internet as a gateway to success. Ancient companies stuck in their old ways are just now creating websites to rake in lost market share, and businesses with existing sites are making changes (e.g. adding blogs) to keep up with the social media boom. This is all good, fantastic, fabulous but the question remains: Do you want a website that gets lost on the web or a highly profitable online marketing tool?