I know the blog posts have fallen off a bit lately, it’s a result of us being swamped with the Beta program (a good problem to have!).  I just wanted to drop a quick post to let everyone know that the beta so far is going really well, we have lots of users in the application testing it out and providing some great feedback.   Thanks to all the folks spending part of their day to help us build an application that meets your needs. 

If you’re not yet a part of the Beta, there’s still time to get involved, you can signup here. 

Though I can’t reveal the users’ names, here are a few of the comments we’ve received so far: 

“Great tool!  Love it!”

- Top-10 media buying agency

“I love that you guys are doing this. Brilliant idea, and it’ll be fun to see you guys grow”

- Small interactive ad agency

“…I’d love to have the people on the front lines really have a chance to work this.”

- Independent mid-sized full service agency

Also, we’ve gotten some press coverage of the Beta here:

-          Idaho Statesman - Love from the local press

-          Media Post - Great to get coverage from the big guys in the industry!  Also mentioned us in another article. 

-          Alternative Search Engines - These guys are great

-          Charleston Gazette - Thanks Charleston!

-          Backchannel -  We also received coverage in their email newsletter

-          901AM - Regular read for me for their tech news aggregation

-     Alarm:clock (w/screenshots):  Another daily reader for me

Thanks for reading! 

Shane

I’m happy to report that as of yesterday, we’re offically into our Beta Program.  The press release is live on the site, and we’re starting to get some coverage in the press. 

Some of the details aren’t in the press release, they just don’t make for good writing, so I wanted to get them out to the folks reading this blog.  The plan for the Beta Program is that it’s an invite-only program with usernames and passwords being sent out to the participants by us here at Balihoo.  We’ll be slowly distributing the login credentials over the next several weeks, we want to make sure that we slowly ease users into the system just to make sure everything goes perfectly.  If you signed up on on the website to be a part of the Beta Program, and haven’t received your login information yet, please be patient, we’ll be getting it out to you shortly.  If you haven’t signed up yet, you can sign-up here. 

Now that the details are out of the way, I have to say that I’m so excited for this Beta Program to launch that I can’t hardly stand it.  While we’ve had a few folks in the application already, this is our first chance to have a semi-large group of customers using the media search engine in their daily business lives.  It’s thrilling to see this product we’ve nurtured and built finally get into the business world and start having an impact.  The feedback we’ve received so far has been incredibly positive and I’m looking forward to hearing more and more feedback from our Beta users. 

As always, please feel free to post a comment or drop me an email if you have any questions or concerns. 

Shane

Another Father’s day has come and gone, but this year I didn’t just receive breakfast in bed and more refrigerator art…no, this year the clan decided that I needed to get on the video sharing bandwagon.  I’m the proud new owner of a Flip Video video capture device. 

The Flip Video device is designed to bring easy video capture and sharing to the rest of us.  I thought I would try it out this morning as I got to the office and provide a quick Balihoo virtual office tour.  I was certainly impressed with the easy-of-use and simplicity of the device, and the quality is “good-enough” for what I’ll be using it for.  More details on the product are availalbe in this  CNN Money Article, but in the mean time check out the Balihoo office tour below. 

Note that the first five people that watch and respond get a Balhoo t-shirt on their doorstep! 

I just returned from two days in Seattle at the Search Marketing Expo Advanced conference put on by Danny Sullivan and Third Door Media.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good conference.  It was short (2 days), convenient in Seattle and the content was on the intermediate to advanced side.  I won’t bore you with the details here, but you can read Search Engine Roundtable for great summaries of the sessions and Tanya at HP has a good SEO blog with an overview of the organic track and sessions.

But this post isn’t about the conference…instead I want to cover a conversation I had at lunch on the first day with Gord Hotchkiss, president of Enquiro Search Solutions.  Gord and I were discussing staffing difficulties as a result of our companies being located outside of major metro areas (Enquiro is based in Kelowna, British Columbia…a stunningly beautiful part of Canada, and Balihoo is located in Boise, Idaho).  We were lamenting the difficulties of finding entry and mid-level search talent as well as retaining anyone who develops a significant amount of experience in the area.  It’s simply such a hot area and so new that it’s a challenge to find experienced people. 

This conversation got me to thinking about the skill-set a search marketer develops and how those skills apply to the broader marketing industry.  I firmly believe that search marketing skills (specifically paid search) are the foundation by which the next generation of marketers will be successful.  Think of how it’s different from traditional marketing:

• The “user” is in control…they are interacting with a media source (search engine) to actively identify what they are looking for
• Targeting can be extremely finite…an entire marketing program (ad, landing page, conversion) can be targeted down to a single keyword, a single user.  Geo-targeting, day-parting and specific keywords allow the marketer to present a set of extremely targeted messages to their specific audience
• Metricability is extreme…you can follow customer behavior at every click, every point they’re interacting with your message.  You can clearly and distinctly understand the ROI of your marketing programs. 

The items identified in the bullets above:  user control, finite targeting and metricability all the skills that are going to be driving marketing moving forward.  Sophisticated marketers in the future are going to embrace these ideals and use technology like search engines and the Balihoo application to implement marketing and advertising campaigns that are meaningful to their customer base. 

Resources:

• SEMPO Institute offers some great entry-level and advanced courses to learn search marketing
• Balihoo is going to allow you to find the perfect media for your advertising opportunities to reach your target market.  Sign-up to be notified when it’s available.