Obama OK. St. Louis Cardinals Win World Series, Snow Kidding, Halloween, Giants Win One: What your business can learn from being the underdog and surprise storms

Posted by Romain Malaganne on Nov 1, 2011

I don’t know where you were on Saturday but I was at my window looking out and pinching myself at the same time. I just could not believe that I was actually seeing snow in October. As the temperature was dropping and the snow was falling, I then heard a loud sound coming from my next door neighbor. Seems like the snow was so wet and heavy that after gathering on the awning, the weight was just too much and it fell into the backyard. Seems like that wasn’t the only structure to fall down. It seems like in my old backyard (central park, NYC) over 1000 trees actually fell.

 

Crazy weather or not. Global warming or not. Whatever you want to say about glaciers and snowcaps melting, the fact is that I have never ever in my 40 years of life experienced trees falling down due to bad weather. Growing up in the Tundra of Long Island, we got plenty of snow. Every few years would be fun and games and sledding and ice-skating. And then I discovered skiing. But with all of that snow up inVermontwhere I became a black diamond skier, there were never trees that would fall down in backyards. So what can you do? Basically, be prepared.

 

Being prepared is all you can do. So if we are talking about your business, then the best thing to do is have a highly optimized search engine friendly website. Then the next thing you can do is purchase the best domain names out their for your business. Then you can build up on those domain names and get google and the other search engines to recognize you. Then social media, Interactive PR, youtube videos. Actually, I have a whole entire annual program that puts your business on the map. But the fact is that it comes down to being prepared.

 

Just a quick thing about Halloween. Did you get any candy? My kids did. And I benefited. Yum. Oh – and did you see googles pumpkin carving video? Here it is: Weird. I don’t see how many views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPAa7BqgSbw Do you?

 

And finally – congrats to the 2011 Winners of the MLB World Series. TheSt. LouisCardinals. Oh – and President Barack Obama who after quitting smoking is a pretty healthy guy. And to the NY Giants for finally winning one for us New Yorkers. Good luck to the J-E-T-S next week as well.

 

Want some motivational posters for your office? Look at http://www.Successories.com and buy something!

 

Want to know more about snow and skiing and ice skating and website marketing? Call Raphi Salem at SalemGlobal Internet Website Marketing and Lead Generation today at 212-222-3292 or email him at info@salemglobal.com. I will personally teach you how to weather the bad storms and take advantage of the good candy

Internet Marketing, Google Changes, Halloween, Election Day, Thanksgiving, 47 Days Till Christmas: Your Business Needs To Prepare For The Holidays

Posted by Salem Global on Nov 3, 2010

Did you say 47 Days till Christmas? That’s right folks. I said it. That’s less than two months. And that means that 4th Quarter is upon us and you should be preparing for 1st Quarter of next year. Yes. 2011. I know you can’t believe it, but believe it. The weather is getting colder. You just finished Halloween Trick or Treating with your kids. Election Day was yesterday and that all means that we are in the middle of 4th quarter.

As my conversations with my clients gets to be very serious about how this past year went vs. how it’s going to be next year, from my biased perspective, you need to pour more of your budget into advertising and marketing now in order to be on top when the economy turns around January 1, 2011. Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is coming up and people have been hoarding their money so they can afford those great holiday presents for their kids. But that’s not all they will be spending on.

People are going to be buying more cars in 2011, going in for that elective surgery and buying the real estate and vacation packages they were holding off on. 2011 is going to be a boom year. It’s very simple. 2007 was a great year. 2008 and 2009 were busts. The economy was faltering and people lost their shirts. Madoff and all of the other Ponzi schemes came to light and people got really hurt.

But think about it. 2010 wasn’t really that bad. People lost their jobs but not as much as in 08 and 09. 2010 was not a recovery year. It was more of a stopping the hemorrhage year. So by that observation, 2011 is going to be a comeback year.

Thanksgiving marks the deciding factor in people’s spending habits. Will they spend money in the retail sector? Will they go another year without a new car, home or vacation? Not necessarily. Of course this is all in the B2C market. Now let’s talk about B2B.

Business to business has really suffered over the past three years but I know it’s coming back. I can feel it in my own business. The calls and inquiries have started to come in. And though most companies are still gun shy, I have received word that many of my contacts would like to start up something “in the new year.” People have been budgeting and now is the time to let go. There are so many new strategies for Internet marketing now. Of course you need a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, but now that Google has changed their results page, you also need to incorporate a local and maps strategy, a social media strategy and an email newsletter strategy. Of course, Google, Bing and Yahoo would also like to take this time to let you know that you are going to need to start spending money with them. They really want your “sponsored ad” dollars. And why not? They deserve it. They built the search engines. And you use them every day of your life. So why shouldn’t they get paid?

So the only reason why they shouldn’t get paid is because there is still click fraud going on. Google needs to curb this evil. They are raking in billions and a hefty percentage of that is all fraudulent. Until they fix the problem, we won’t be encouraging PPC campaigns. We will continue to educate and test but there has to be real ROI.

What about your business? In addition to SEO search engine optimization, are you also testing for PPC pay per click? Are you blogging? Using social media? LinkedIn? Facebook? Are you sending out newsletters? Need help with Internet promotion for your business? We have been helping companies and businesses strategize online since 1997. Call Raphi Salem at 212-993-5828, email info@salemglobal.com or check out www.SalemGlobal.com for more information about how to win the election, get the treats instead of tricks and obviously finish 2010 positively.