Posts (page 2)

Microsoft bidding on Yahoo! was not a surprise at all.  With Yahoo's shares being so low, Microsoft was in the perfect position to make a nice high bid, roughly $45 billion.  It makes perfect sense to me.  Microsoft has a somewhat failed search engine in comparison to the market.  Acquiring Yahoo would help them make a move and solidify the number two spot in terms of search.  Although, what happens to live search.  I am sure there will be tons to talk about and speculate, especially because Yahoo hasn't even sold yet, but we shall certainly see.  I know I am going to be paying attention and reading up on what is going to happen.    

Valentine's Day is only a few short weeks away.  Do you normally buy gifts for your loved ones, children, sisters?  I have purchased an array of gifts for my wife over the years, but I am still not sure what we are going to be doing this year.  I usually cook her dinner, which isn't much different than every night, but make it more special, maybe some candles on the table, definitely flowers, and specifically cook her favorite meal with favorite dessert as well.  But what about for other family members?  Do you feel the need to support a holiday like this?  I feel like it is one of those holidays where you should not feel like you have to spend a ton of money, but apparently I am not in the norm.  The National Retail Federation expects over $17 billion to spent on Valentine's Day this year with the average person spending over $120.00.  Certainly, most gifts cost money, even simple gifts like flowers, candles, dinner.

What about gift cards?  Does anyone give gift cards for Valentine's Day?  It might not sound too romantic, but what if your husband really wants to buy something that you are just not comfortable buying, like stereo equipment or outdoors gear.  Now please don't get me wrong, my wife can pick out my camping gear without a problem and she even goes along with us when we camp, she probably starts a fire better than all of my friends.  I just wanted to clarify.  I don't think a giving a gift card for Valentine's Day is a bad idea at all.

The holidays are over, but that doesn't mean you have to stop rewarding your employees or clients.  Maybe you had a great year or your team pulled together and worked extra hard during November and December.  I hope you at least gave them an extra day off or maybe a little bit of money.  However, now is the time for you to get your company off to a great 2008 and what better way of doing that than with the help of your staff.  Your employees come to work everyday to make money as well as make the company money so they have a place to come to everyday.  Keeping company moral up is key to a successful business and using rewards are great way of doing that.  I'm not saying you should throw money in every direction, but you can set-up goals or "games" to offer incentives to your employees.  This creates another reason for your employees to stick their nose to the grindstone, work hard for you, and benefit themselves.       

I have spent the last three weeks changing every destination url for all of the keywords I have in Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and Business.com.  WOW!  I have over 25,000 keywords related to gift cards and I have to individually create them in a Google builder and then place them in a spreadsheet and upload them accordingly.  Sound like fun?  I am doing this because I want to be able to track all of my statistics in Google Analytics.  GA is one of the best analytical programs going in my opinion and it is free as well.  Therefore, the payoff will be great for me, but for now, it is making my eyes go numb.  I don't spend all day doing this or I wouldn't be able to get the rest of my work done, but I try to do more than a thousand a day.  I am almost finished with Ask and I finished Business.com's keywords.  Wish me luck with the rest.  

Maybe you just blog here, but if you have other blogs or a Web site you could become a GiftCards.com affiliate.  Becoming an affiliate at GiftCards.com can help you make some money without doing much of anything.  It also does not cost anything to join.  If you think that you could encourage the visitors to your site to purchase Visa brand gift cards with a simple banner link or text link, then I suggest looking into the GiftCards.com affiliate program.  Feel free to comment to this post with any questions you may have and I would be more than happy to speak with you about the details and explain the program in more depth. 

Well, it has been a couple of weeks since I last wrote something and figured that my first day back to work would be a great day to start.  I did quite a bit of reading of the holidays and it has inspired me to keep up with my writing.  I definitely feel that reading makes me a better writer and I try to read a broad mix of literature.  I finished reading Starship Troopers and Clapton.  Complete opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of books, but both excellent reads.  I think now I am going to pick-up The Kite Runner, which my wife just finished and really enjoyed.  My goal in the new year is to try to keep up with my wife with reading, which I know won't happen, but want to try.  She reads at least a book a week and I am not nearly as fast as a reader, but want to challenge myself in the new year. 

GiftCards.com had an excellent December and I hope everyone out there enjoys spending the gift cards they received.  With the endless options of a Visa gift card, there is no reason to not enjoy and spend your gift card as soon as possible.  It seems that the biggest complaint about receiving a Visa gift card is the charges that come along with the card.  However, these charges are rather easy to avoid as long as you spend the amount of the gift card in a reasonable time period from when you received the card.  If someone gives you a fifty dollar bill in a birthday card, you most likely will spend that cash in a week or so.  However, some consumers tend to hold on to gift cards longer than they would cash and this is when the problems ensue.  Charges do not hit until 6 months after the purchase of the gift card.  I would assume that most people spend the cash they receive within a matter of a few weeks, maybe a couple of months at the most, but with gift cards, it is important to spend them rather quickly.  A few months is still a long time to wait to spend a gift card, however, charges will not begin 6 months after the purchase of the card.  This allows everyone to use a Visa gift card the same way they spend cash and not be hit with any charges.

Well...I am back from a much needed break and will be writing on a regular basis again.  Thanks for listening.   

Does anyone else belong to a network on Ning.com?  Ning is a community of communities if you have never visited the site.  There are communities that suit just about anyone.  I encourage everyone to check it out and maybe create a page of their own or if you are ambitious, start your own community.  I am thinking about starting one for GiftCards.com, but having the community be much more broad and talk about corporate rewards and incentive programs.  More and more companies are choosing gift cards to reward their employees around the holidays as well as throughout the year.  More than 25% of the Fortune 1000 choose GiftCards.com to give their employees or clients a gift that is not only appreciated, but can work as a marketing tool for the company as well.  The way it works as a marketing tool is either through a Co-brand card or just putting the company name on the card.  Just wanted to share my thoughts about Ning.com and I will keep you posted when I create a Ning community.      

I want to know if anyone keeps a shopping wish list online for their friends or family to view?  Kaboodle.com has been given rave reviews over the past couple of months and I have been using the Amazon wish list for about a year.  Kaboodle is different because I can go to any site and if I see a product I like I can add it to my wishlist.  When you click "Kaboodle This", whether it is from your task bar or the merchant has a button on their site, you are taken to Kaboodle to verify the item and then you are re-directed back to the site you were on.  This is great for family members and friends because you don't have to find a way to ask what someone wants for their birthday or Christmas.  If you are like me whenever someone asks what I want I either say nothing or whatever.  I like receiving gifts because it shows thought, care, and love, but I never think of what to say when asked the question.  However, I do spend all day on the computer and when I Stumble Upon a site that I like or a product I think I would enjoy I can add it to my list and my family doesn't even have to bother asking me what I want.  Let me know what you think about wish list sites.   

So, where did I leave off.  I went to the morning workshops and thought they were rather informative and provided me with some good tips.  The most beneficial part of the workshops was the discussions that began from them.  I am a rather talkative person and wound up commenting throughout the day.  After the morning workshops was lunch and the keynote speaker.  Both were very disappointing.  I am a vegetarian and had called ahead to specify that I would like a veggie lunch.  Well, I received a veggie lunch, but why is that whenever certain catering groups have to make a vegetarian dish, they try to go way outside the box!  This happens whenever my wife and I go to a conference or somewhere where you have to request a special lunch or dinner.  They served me polenta with a bunch of very poorly cooked veggies and rice that was made with chicken stock.  I like polenta, but it is really only good, when it is great.  I have had great polenta once in my life at a very fancy restaurant years ago.  What is wrong with making a pasta dish or a veggie wrap so I can't see how poorly cooked the veggies are.  Oh well, I will stop ranting about the food because I try hard not to complain because it is my decision to eat differently.  The keynote speaker was not horrible, but left me wishing he gave a better speech. 

On to the rest of the day.  After lunch there was only one workshop to go to and I chose the one about Google Analytics.  I use GA on a daily basis and was hoping I was going to learn a few more tricks.  I enjoyed the speaker and thought she gave a great workshop on GA.  I was able to talk to her for a while after, which provided me with some of the answers I was looking for.  By this time it was almost the end of the day and I went back to the main room to see if I won any prizes.  The only reason I decided to stick around was because I knew I would win.  That sounds odd, but I do have a little bit of ESP.  My mother says that so did my grandmother and it was actually frightening at times.  My wife says the same about me.  I knew I was going to win the certificate for the fish restaurant and figured I would just give it to my mom.  Guess what, I won a 50 dollar certificate to McCormick and Schmicks. 

Overall, I thought it was a great experience and I took away some really good ideas that I have already started implementing.  I think if nothing else you leave a conference with a few new ideas and some good connections, then it was a success.          

I went to Duquesne University yesterday for the 2nd Annual Pennsylvania Business Technology Conference.  I went with the aspirations of learning a few new things when it comes to my marketing efforts and I have to say I was very pleased.  First of all, Duquesne is a very nice school in downtown Pittsburgh.  The school sits on top of a big hill overlooking the city on one side and the Allegheny River on the other.  I arrived rather early which was nice because I was able to grab a cup of coffee from Starbucks and do a little bit of work before the Conference.  The majority of the speakers were great, really great. 

We were welcomed by Dr. Mary McKinney, who is the Director of the Duquesne University Small Business Development Center.  She turned the mic over to Dr. Kenneth Saban, Associate Professor of Marketing at Duquesne, who has an extensive background in marketing, over 25 years.  Dr. Saban then introduced David Radin, Andy Roach, John White, and Bill Shore.  All of whom were extremely well-spoken and had something unique to offer to the audience.  After the morning round table discussion I was off to the workshops.   I chose the New Media Weaponry workshop because it seemed like it was the one that most correlated with the kinds of tools I use on a daily basis and  I wanted to learn more about some of the efforts I am making.  The two speakers were Sam Shaaban from NuRelm and Aaron Brauser from TalkShoe.  This workshop went well.  The audience really took part and we took turns talking about some of the effective marketing measures each of us are doing and how to make them even better.  I left this workshop feeling good about what I do on a daily basis as well as taking a few new tips I hadn't though of.  From there I went over to the eMarketing workshop and how to exploit affordable online strategies, which is always something I am looking for in my field of work.  There was just one speaker at this workshop, Abu Noaman from Elliance, Inc.  He was entertaining as well as informative and he was able to relate a great deal of his marketing efforts to his young children, which I thought was unique and worked well. 

This seems to be getting a little long for my normal posts, so I will come back tomorrow and post the remainder.