Kikabink News

Jerry Yang has stepped down from his role as chief executive of Yahoo. Announcing his resignation in a memo sent to Yahoo’s staff on Monday evening, Mr Yang said he would continue as acting CEO until the board appoints a successor.

Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, has been CEO for the last year and a half after he took over from Terry Semel, a Hollywood studio boss that Yang had chosen for the job. Unfortunately, during this time, Yahoo has been marred by a declining share price, a botched merger with Microsoft, board room strife, and a decision to retrench 1,500 employees.

Yahoo has hired head hunters Heidrick & Struggles to help look for candidates. Upon appointing Jerry Yang’s successor, the outgoing CEO plans to remain actively involved at Yahoo as a key executive and member of the board.

Yahoo’s share price increased by over 4 percent in after-hours trading following the news, indicating that shareholders are pleased that Jerry will no longer be CEO.

Source: Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller, “Jerry Yang, Yahoo Chief, Steps Down”, The New York Times, November 17, 2008

Heads up to everyone in the financial information niche: according to BizReport - which quotes a comScore report - people can’t get enough of financial websites right now.

comScore’s report says that the financial news/research category grew 10 percent (8.8 million users) from August to September 2008. The big financial sites with the largest increases were:

1. Guardian Business (141 percent)
2. Sky Money (122 percent)
3. CNN Money (103 percent)
4. Bloomberg.com (60 percent)
5. Telegraph Money & Business News (56 percent)

Source: Kristina Knight, “Report: In tough times, consumers turn to financial websites”, BizReport, November 11, 2008

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I got spammed by an SEO consulting company yesterday. I get hundreds of spam emails per day, but this particular email stood out because it was sent by an Australian company based in my own city. A company that should have known better. (I’m tempted to name and shame them, but I really don’t want to give them any link value!)

Since we offer Internet marketing services, seeing this email made me MAD. It’s actions like this that give our industry a bad name. But I’m even more stunned at how DUMB this company is to send out generic emails offering its SEO services. There are so many things wrong with this picture, I couldn’t possibly list them all in this email, but let’s discuss three aspects that should have been obvious:

1. Sending out spam is against the law. I believe sending unsolicited commercial email is illegal in the United States and other countries. It certainly is in Australia, and has been for many years now. As a prospective client: could I really trust a company that so blatantly breaks the law?

2. Sending out spam is wrong from an Internet marketing point of view. It shows disrespect to Internet users and also makes me wonder: what would this company do regarding SEO if I did engage them? What kind of black or grey hat tactics would they use that might jeopardize my business?

3. The email itself was not personally addressed to anyone at our firm, and was a generic offer to provide SEO services. Had the sender bothered to look at our website they would have noticed that we were a COMPETITOR. One operating in the same city and country at that!

Actually, there’s a fourth issue worth mentioning…

4. Out of curiosity I visited the company’s website. The headline read: “Guaranteed Lowest Prices for Web Marketing & SEO”. Now, maybe there is a market for “cheap” web marketing and search engine optimization services. But to me, that’s a bit like a law firm advertising itself with the same line: “Guaranteed Lowest Prices for Legal Advice.”

Um… do you want the cheapest legal advice around… or do you want the best, most cost-effective legal advice that delivers the results you want? The same principle applies to Internet marketing services – especially SEO. Do you want to pay the cheapest prices… or do you want to get the best results for your money?

Cost-effective… value for money… affordable. They’re all terms that may be appropriate. But “Guaranteed Lowest Prices” sounds like their running a discount store. Not the kind of company I would want as my trusted SEO advisor…

In its recent case study profiling H&R Block, MarketingSherpa revealed a cool idea you might want to test to generate buzz (traffic and ultimately conversions) for your online business:invite people to submit YouTube videos in return for a prize.

In H&R Block’s case, the company invited people to submit 3 minute videos describing how they would use their tax refund.

The winner, as voted by viewers, would win $5,000 and have their video displayed on the home page of the H&R website. The initiative resulted in 130 people submitting entries and the YouTube videos getting more than 1.6 million views. Nice.

Source: Case Study, “H&R Block Gets Big Buzz Through Social Media For Digital Products: How To Test and Pick Channels”, MarketingSherpa, October 30, 2008

A survey of around 200 respondents by copy editing service, GooseGrade has found that blog readers are somewhat turned off by typos, grammatical errors and poor writing.

Those surveyed - a diverse group of respondents who spent some time reading blogs but generally used “mainstream sources” for news - indicated that finding errors on blogs makes them less likely to share the content they find with others.

Specifically, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors harmed a reader’s opinion of a blog and their willingness to share the content on that blog with others. Interestingly, the survey also found that most respondents believed such errors to be common. Only 20 percent of respondents said it was “not often” or “never” that they found such errors.

Bottom line: try to write well, and strive to eliminate spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. (I will too!)

Sources: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Errors By Bloggers Kill Credibility & Traffic, Study Finds”, ReadWriteWeb, October 30, 2008, GooseGrade Reader Perception Survey Results