Whoever thought that the safest place to keep a few million dollars was in the middle of a busy Toronto street….

A pictorial essay of how businesses along Bloor Street in Toronto make use of their Yellow Pages……….talk about expensive advertising… I wonder how many of these business actually paid to be in that book?

It seems one of the popular places to keep your Yellow pages is on the sidewalk

Wow, someone just left millions of dollars laying on the stoop....

If you stacked these 8 books on top of each other, you could have a great spot to sit down on.....

I like to spend money like this too

I think these yellow pages are propping up the glass wall...not sure

Some yellow pages trying hide in the corner......successfully no less...

Oh, lonesome me.....

Maybe the Yellow Page people are hoping whoever steals this bike steals the Yellow Page too?

Don't, don't you want me.....

I’m far from an environmentalist tree hugging eco freak (I own a 12 cylinder car, wear a coat made from the white fur of the Giant Panda and go on an annual dolphin hunting trip) , but think of the environmental foot print left by these books sitting on the street…..the trees, the transportation costs, the printing,  the energy……

It’s easy to go out and say, “Hey, I need to generate a lot of leads” and you know what, it’s not that not hard to go out and find a lot of people to talk to, who on the face of it, might seem like they are worth talking to you – they work in your target industry, they read your promotional material, they cruise your website – But you still don’t know that the answer to the two most important question that operates a bona fide lead from a tire-kicking pretender. The two most important questions you need to answer are:

1. Can a prospect afford to buy
2. Does a prospect have the authority to purchase

Up next – Sales Lead Generation 102 – How to answer those two important questions……

You would think by now that these items would be prima facie for online marketers, yet journalist still find fodder in poor website design………

• eCommerce sites urged to clean up content before Google’s ‘Panda’ goes global - Click to Read
• Consumers Call for Businesses to Offer More Product Information on Web and Mobile – (OK, so this is a little bit of PR for some company’s product, but even still…) – Click to Read
• Why e-commerce sites need a clear checkout process – Click to Read

Now, back to sleep….I mean the gym………….yes, back to the gym…..finish off that 10, no 15KM on the treadmill…….

hate the game.

It used to be that SEO was all the rage in Internet marketing………….what you do mean you haven’t optimized your site for 7 zillion long tail keywords…..but now it looks like people are whining about the fact that, at the end of the day, they just aren’t that good at it.    Maybe the government should intervene and set up rules for fair internet use?  Maybe the FTC should regulate search engine optimization.  A few people I will be sending boxes of tissue to:

• Stack Exchange’s Joel Spolsky On How SEO Makes The Internet Worse
• Investor: SEO is dead (to startups)
• Is Google’s SEO euphoria killing premium writing on the net?
• Richard J. Tofel: Someday, the sun will set on SEO — and the business of news will be better for it

Without getting in to technical details, at the end of the day, the search engines are just mechanical systems that can be gamed.  Don’t game them too much and you are a rock star, start  doing too well, and you are hurting the Internet (My browser sheds a tear every time I land on a content farm).

Seriously, whose fault is it that some scraped spam site ranks higher than yours?  It’s the search engines’ ; Despite all the brain power behind them, they have the information organizational skills of a seven year old, well a lot of seven year olds, on crack, working really fast, with a poor knowledge of the English language (or what ever knowledge you happen to be searching in).   The first few results they bring back may be right, but after that it turns in to a game of  Scrabble being played by these 7 year old crack smoking kids, none of whom actually speak the same language or even understand the rules…..I think you get the idea.

So, what is left do to? Keep kvetching about how the search engines suck?

Or your can accept the fact that there is an edge to exploit, stop whining about it and start doing it…..like Hearst

Hearst Magazine Increased Web Traffic By 150% with SEO and Wordtracker

I’ll leave you with this clip from Godfather II, where Hyman Roth pretty much sums up the whole SEO situation

I’m not much of a cheerleader, but this series of 6 videos from Brett Wilson – Founder of First Energy and a panelist on the Canadian version of Dragon’s Den, is an excellent example of using video to connect with people. You can see why he has been so successful in business.

OK, so this might not be the type of action you want to encourage, but in the spirit of turning lemons in to lemonade (MMMMMMMM lemonade……) think of how your business could use video to effect positive change in the world.

So, without much further ado (or over inflated positive spin), I give you……

Online self-injury videos may reinforce behaviour – CTV

TORONTO — YouTube videos illustrating cutting, burning and other methods of self-injury may have an impact beyond the online world in normalizing and possibly even reinforcing the behaviour among viewers, a new Canadian study suggests (Read More)

Well this may not be for everyone, but if you know how to work it like these two girls, you may be able to bring in some extra business

Levi’s sneaky “butt cam” campaign – Salon.com

Want to create a viral hit? I suggest the phrase “ass cam.” “Ever wonder what goes on behind your back?” self-proclaimed “Rear View Girl” Reanin asks from a casually cluttered bedroom, right before slipping a hidden camera into the back pocket of her accomplice Jessie’s form-fitting jeans. “Well, we figured out a way to bust people.” In a booty-flaunting clip that’s racked up nearly 7 million views since it debuted on YouTube last week, the two then take to the streets of Los Angeles and stealthily record all the second looks their rear views attract (read more here)

Maybe there is some virtue of thinking with your ass?

It’s all well and good to go on and on about how great online video is for marketing and lead generation, but at the end of it all, someone has to stop talking about it and actually start producing them.

And I can tell you from experience, it is no easy task.  For most people, you are better off hiring an experienced video production crew (and yes, a crew can consist of 1 person) than trying to figure out how to reinvent the wheel.

But, for those of you who have some time to kill and some money to burn, these two resources are a pretty good introduction into the video production process.

• Storyboard Tutorial – How to Create Storyboards for Film, Video, and Television. This is not for the faint of heart, but gives you a good idea of what is involved in making all those pretty pictures dancing across your screen
• Video Production Basics: Video Series – From eHow.   A nice overview – but maybe a enough rope to hang yourself with……

Enjoy

From the “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus department”……   Sales and marketing don’t play well together

Forrester finds most b2b organizations not aligned

Cambridge, Mass.—Only 8% of b2b companies surveyed by Forrester Research said they have tight alignment between sales and marketing, according to a new report.

Who hasn’t heard this story?