After many requests, I’m happy to announce that we’ve launched a new “Agency” service level for Trackur.

The online media monitoring service now offers PR firms and marketing agencies the following valuable options:

• Your logo displayed on the dashboard! Client’s can see your brand, not Trackur’s!
• A custom URL for login. Want Trackur.com/youragency? You’ve got it!
• Unlimited saved searches! Not only can you organize your Trackur account by client campaigns, but now there’s no limit on the number of saved searches–track as many brands, clients, competitors, trends, as you want!
• Annual pricing plan. As well as a monthly plan, you can now pre-pay annually and get a discount and a guaranteed rate for 12 months.

Interested? For more details and pricing of Trackur Agency, drop me an email.

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

Read the original post:
Trackur Offers Agencies a Co-Branded Dashboard; Unlimited Searches

I know a few things about you.

• 50% of you will have your buying decision influenced by what we say at Marketing Pilgrim.
• That increases to 56% if making a decision related to marketing products or services.
• 25% of you trust our advertisers, simply because you trust us.
• 38% of you will discover a new blog to read from among those we link to.

No, I’m not a psychic. I’m not even a Mentalist. Heck, I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night! I did, however, read a new study from BuzzLogic and JupiterResearch on the influence of blogs.

The study reveals a lot about the influence your favorite blog plays in many of the decisions you make.

For example, the blogs you trust, help you find other blogs:

• Links more powerful than search: For frequent readers, links beat search as a navigation tool: 38 percent said blog links were the top tool for discovering new blog content as compared to 34 percent who voted for Web search.
• Links signal trust: For frequent readers, blog links appear to have similar impact as a trusted recommendation from a person (a response from 39 percent of survey participants).

Blogs also influence a number of your purchasing decisions:

• Blogs influence purchases: One half (50 percent) of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.
• Blogs sway more purchases among readers than social networks: More frequent blog readers say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions than content from social networking sites.
• Niche focus ups influence factor: For those who have found blog content useful for product decisions, more than half (56 percent) said blogs with a niche focus and topical expertise were key sources.
• Blogs go beyond tech: Outside of technology-related purchases, for which 31 percent of readers say blogs are useful, other key categories include media and entertainment (15 percent); games/toys and/or sporting goods (14 percent); travel (12 percent); automotive (11 percent); and health (10 percent).

This isn’t the first study that highlights the influence social media has on our buying decisions and trust–Radically Transparent is packed full of studies and research–but it’s still valuable information for convincing your boss to monitor what bloggers are saying about your brand (hint, hint).

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Excerpted from:
Study Confirms I Can Get 50% of You to Do My Bidding!

Two requests continue to dominate the list of new features you’d like to see added to Trackur’s online media monitoring service.

1. Some way of measuring the influence of a web site.
2. The option to keep notes on a web site that discusses your brand.

Well, we just knocked it out of the park with the introduction of the new Trackur Influence dashboard and our new TrackurRank scoring system.

With Trackur Influence, you’ll now have valuable influence information, right at your fingertips. Here’s what we can now tell you about every single site that mentions your brand:

• How many backlinks, social media mentions, estimated traffic, and, the biggy, how often that blogger/news site mentions the keyword you’re tracking.
• With a sprinkling of magic dust, we then distill that down to a TrackurRank out of 100. A rank of 5 and the site is not likely to influence your reputation. A rank of 50 or above, and you might want to take notice.
• Just for good measure, we also show you a screenshot of the site AND let you add your own notes. Great for keeping tabs on whether a blogger has something interesting to say or making a note of a follow-up needed by your team!

The news gets even better–we’re keeping the price at just $18 a month! Seriously! The same type of social media influence measurement tools you’d normally pay thousands for, yours for just $18 a month! But wait! Order in the next 5 mins….OK, enough with my excitement.

Trackur Influence (in beta, of course) is available right now– just look for the link when you expand any search result.

If you’ve not already taken the free 14-day trial, maybe now is a good time to give it a try. If your free trial has already expired, but you’re dying to try Trackur Influence, drop us an email and we’ll set the clock back to zero for you.

See the original post:
Trackur Adds Influence Measurement Tools; Price Still Only $18!

By Brent D. Payne

A fellow friend and SEO, Vinny Goldsmith, mentioned I should do a blog post about the trends and reasons behind those trends regarding the ‘Palin Effect’.

As many of you are aware, Sarah Palin has been quite the buzz on the internet over the past few weeks. In fact, Sarah Palin related queries (all queries broad matching to ‘Palin’) resulted in 7.18% of Tribune Interactive’s total unique visits from search engines during the month of September. That’s nothing to sneeze at, that’s for sure.

The chart below shows that, for Tribune, she garnered nearly two-thirds of the market share when compared to the other three candidates on the 2008 ticket (broad match on other candidates’ surnames as well).

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You know me; always on the lookout for examples of why it’s so vital to maintain a positive business reputation.

So, I’m probably the only person that gets excited by the complete and utter collapse of a company that was generating $2.2 billion in annual revenue!

The Bill Heard Organization was the country’s 11th largest Chevrolet dealer group and in 2005 was named one of its “Dealers of the Year” by GM. Despite that, Bill Heard let its reputation deteriorate to the point that ultimately shut down its business.

As Ward’s explains (emphasis added)…

Perhaps it was rogue employees or a culture within the group that allowed or even encouraged questionable behavior. Whatever the case, the Heard group was unable to shake the perception that it conducted business unethically.

More than 500 complaints against the company were filed in recent years with the Better Business Bureau chapters in the seven states where it conducted business. Additionally, the Internet became a forum for angry customers who posted numerous complaints about Bill Heard on websites that allow customers to review businesses.

Add rising gas prices, $280k in state fines, and having its credit line yanked, and you can see how a bad reputation can be the catalyst for the business’ collapse.

Of course, as Abraham Lincoln once said, your reputation is merely the shadow cast by your character–if Bill Heard had treated its customers well, it wouldn’t be in this miss to start with.

But, what can YOU learn from the collapse of Bill Heard?

1. Monitor your competitor’s reputation as closely as you monitor you own.
2. Be aware of the complaints being levied against your competitors–are you one blog post away from the same criticism?
3. Watch for your competitor’s weaknesses and make them your strengths. As a competitor to Bill Heard, I’d focus on our pledge to treat customers with respect and honesty.
4. When your competitor ultimately implodes, reach out to its customers. In this case, I’d offer a special $10 oil change to all of Bill Heard’s customers or an extra $500 trade-in payment for anyone that trades a car bought at Bill Heard.

Monitoring your own reputation is a given–right?–but you should also keep a close eye on your competition. When they suffer a reputation misstep, don’t miss the opportunity to use that to your advantage.

(Hat-tip to Laszlo)

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