The Caffeinated Blog

My Favorite Search Marketing Blogs

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and has plenty of leftover turkey to make enough turkey incarnations to last a lunchtime.  I made an excellent turkey soup with barley and mushrooms...it's in a book, so I may be generous and post it here for you (it is, after all, the season to pass the cheer).

I've stumbled across a lot of blogs about SEO and paid search, and I'd just like to share a few of my favorites:

1. Search Engine Land - this is just the motherload of search marketing info, IMHO.  Everything you could possibly want to know by all the experts you could possibly gather under one blog roof (bloof?).  I never go a day without at least scanning through the SearchCap daily email to find a nugget of valuable information that I may have missed otherwise.
2. SEOmoz - top notch advice from top notch experts.  I'm amazed by the amount of information on not just SEO, but online marketing in general.  I haven't become a Premium member yet, but it's on my to-do list. 
3. SEO Book - Aaron Wall gives some excellent tips and tidbits, plus free SEO tools (woo-hoo!).
4. and 5. Inside Adwords and adCenter Blog - I mention these at the same time because they're "official" blogs and just make good sense to read when managing campaigns on these platforms.

If you haven't already, show these blogs some love and pay them a visit.  Please comment on what your favorite online marketing blogs are...I'd love to know and to pay them a visit myself.

It's Red Again...Or Is It?

File this under How Not to Roll Out a Holiday Marketing Campaign...

Starbucks has started a holiday campaign called Pass The Cheer.  It involves these things called Cheer Passes, which are supposedly distributed at Starbucks locations.  What these "cheer passes" are, I haven't a clue; and guess what...as it turns out, neither do Starbucks employees.

At the time of this posting, the website CheerPass.com does not seem to work, so I cannot seem to find out for you, my kind reader (or readers, as the case may be) what the heck these things do.  There's another website, itsredagain.com, which is mentioned in small, "oh-crap-we-forgot-to-mention-the-website-on-the-marketing-materials" print on cups and in-store signage, and does little more to shed any light on this valiant effort on the part of the mega-corporation to spread kindness the world throughout.

My mother-in-law did happen to notice this website on her regular cup of Gingerbread Latte, so she checked out the site.  In fact, we both looked at it on two separate computers at the same time.  Although we could both understand the basic premise of the program, neither of us could figure out what the heck we were supposed to do.

So, on her next trip to our local Starbucks location, she asked the employee at the register.  They said it had to do with doing something nice for someone else, but when asked about the Cheer Passes, they had no idea what those were.  She asked again at another location, and got the same basic response.

So, here's my question - how did the geniuses in the Starbucks marketing department expect to make this well-intentioned campaign work, if 1) there was seemingly no formal roll out to all the stores with in-store marketing materials and training, and 2) there are 2 websites about this program, one of which doesn't work and the other which doesn't explain crap about the program, and 3) the latter website is marketed as an afterthought?

Would anyone care to enlighten me?