Friday, June 25th I published my first ebook. The book is call "The Internet is Blue: How Democrats are winning online and what Republicans can do about it". The book sounds (and is) aimed at a political audience but I think that plenty of markets could still find it a useful read. So I wanted to write a post about it here, to let you know what its about and how you can get it.

Why I'm telling you about Politics

About a month ago I decided to combine my professional and political presence on the web. I'd been doing it on Facebook for almost a year, and since I volunteer and openly speak about my beliefs I decided I might as well let it extend into all areas of my online life. Many marketers say never talk politics in your business space. I used to agree, but as I'm obviously political, I figure its best if people know up front. That way if my beliefs bother or offend them they know not to work with me up-front, instead of finding out about it later.

Plus, this book is less about politics and more about understanding your market and how to reach them online.

Why I wrote this book

This particular ebook came out of a discussion with my grandfather, who was very ill and expected to die from cancer at the time. I was upset after reading multiple emails from Republicans which I thought sounded like spam. (These emails can be found at The Internet is Blue.) I complained to him that politicians don't know how to market. My grandfather suggested I write a book about it. So I immediately set out to write the book. My grandfather is doing much better now and the book is dedicated to him.

How this ebook relates to online marketing

This book mostly shows three things:

1. What Republicans have done wrong online (examples)

2. What Democrats have done right online (case studies)

3. What Republicans can do to fix things (action plan in nine parts)

Each of these sections deal with specific areas of online marketing in the realm of politics. Most topics are touched on from design and messaging to social media and web development.

What YOU can get out of this book

Many companies do the same things things wrong as the Republicans, ignoring important demographics, valuing the sale over the customer or even not being willing to pay for exceptional web development. We can all learn something from Obama's whirlwind online campaign. And of course there's the discussion of up-coming trends at the end of the book as well. If you are a developer or even just a business interested in doing better online marketing, there are plenty of great tidbits of knowledge in this ebook. (Or course, if you are interested in politics then you should certainly get a copy!)

Where you can find it

Hopefully I've sold you on my book, now, here's how you can get it.

The ebook is for sale at TheInternetisBlue.com for $15. Right now it is only available as a pdf from the website but we should soon be releasing a print copy as well as a version for amazon.

If you are press or a blogger who would like to review the book, please contact me directly.

Welcome to the new face of Search Engine Optimization.

photo credit: quinn.anya

Here at Veribatim we've been following SEO trends for years, watching the gimmicks and trick used to put a site at the top of a list. We've done work in the optimization field before, but I'll readily admit its not been our forte. The trends and tricks changed too quickly to not devote a full time staff person to analyzing the right direction. While most of the basic principles of SEO have remained the same (see the four ares Google pay attention to in SEO), the unobtainable algorithm to get your page to #1 has been like the search for the Holy Grail.

That is until Google Caffeine started to break onto the seen. As a marketer who believes in purity of message I am pleased by what I perceive Caffeine to be. Caffeine depends more on your content than your meta-data, meaning that your site should reflect what you actually do. Right now some websites are written just for search engines, not for their market. Google is trying to reward people who write for their audience instead of trying to game the system.

To find out more about what Caffeine brings to the table and how it might affect the current standing of your website, check out Irbtrax's post on Caffeine.

The overall message of this video is find where your audience is and go there. More and more young people, Gen Y, Gen X and rapidly even babyboomers use some kind of social media. So charities need to be on these sites if they want to reach people. The old ways just aren't good enough and its not enough to rely on Word of Mouth to reach the younger generations.

If you already love social media, or technology, help out the causes you are passionate about. They need volunteers to help them utilize new technology and get with the trends!

Finally, if you don't have a cause that speaks to you yet be sure to check out Captain Hope's Kids here in the Dallas area.

Captain Hope's Kids Blog - NEW

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Just a few weeks ago LinkedIn announced their new blackberry app, allowing you to take LinkedIn with you wherever you go.

I have to admit I was already macgyvering a way to do this. I synced up my blackberry to Outlook and then downloaded the Linked-In Outlook plugin. This made life slower but eventually all my contacts ended up on my phone (more on this here).

LinkedIn must have had the same thought I did. All those connections are great but I need to be able to access them easily from my phone. There's just no point to connecting if I can't call them up.

But its more than that. For a long time I categorized LinkedIn as a lesser social media platform. It was for getting business cards stored logically and paper free: that was about it. Don't get me wrong, I know it has more features and some people use it very effectively in their business. But the lack of real time updates and notifications shoved it in to the I'm-too-buzy-to-devote-that-much-energy-right-now category.

But much like my recent post on how Twitter is ineffective without apps; LinkedIn is ineffective without mobile. I have a feeling I will be doing a lot more with LinkedIn in the next few months.

(Additional Note: If you watched my last video blog you'll know my blackberry, may it rest in peace, finally keeled over. So I have not actually gotten to try the LinkedIn blackberry app. However, I got an android and downloaded a Linked-In app. Even though its not an app developed by LinkedIn, I'm still excited to test it and discover all the things I've been missing!)

Apparently everyone who doesn't use it.

A good friend of mine who follows me on Twitter and Facebook suddenly says, "I think I'm going to stop following you." So say, "What? Why?" And she says, "I'm so sick of those FourSquare updates. I could care less. They are annoying. No one wants to know you're 'mayor' of your church." And then Edward says, "Tell me about it. Its even more annoying when you're with her and she's checking in every 5 minutes."

Of course I immediately defended myself saying, "I use it to let clients and other tech people know where I am. Or to connect with people in the same place. Or to find out more about a particular area of town."

But they both just rolled their eyes at me. And then it occurred to me, before I started using FourSquare, I hated it too. I would see all these updates from FourSquare on Facebook and I'd be like, "Who care?" Until I got in on the fun. Then I forget about how irritating it was.

Of course the more I thought about this, the more I realized its true of almost all social media. If you don't use it, you HATE it. People who aren't on (or want to be on) Twitter can't stand that other people use it. They say its stupid and pointless. Same with Facebook. Non-facebook users feel that Facebook is a waste of time. Before that it was IMing, or web-surfing.

I'm not saying the FourSquare isn't just a little bit silly. I'm not saying it will last forever. But I will say, to the people who don't use it: don't knock it til you try it.

And to the people who do use it: if someone just doesn't "get it" don't worry. They'll either catch on or just be grumpy and neither effects you. If you lose a follower or two, you might want to re-evaluate, but I say so what? If you know them in real life, connect there. If you know them online and a FourSquare update offends them, forget about 'em. Be yourself online! (Even if that person is a trend-obsessing, constantly-updating, tech nerd, like me.)

Last week I recorded my update from Galveston where I was working on Hurricane Ike relief efforts with my church youth group. During that time my poor blackberry took quite a beating. So I decided to blog today about the blackberry's durability. Oh, and I made some snide remarks about the iPhone/iPad (because I can't help it).

In the video I mention how blackberries are selling better in India than the iPhone and how an 18 year old girl would prefer her blackberry to a new iPad.

Do you have any great stories about surviving smartphones? Share.

So, while many of you got to hang out at SXSW, learning new tech, I hung out with our future. I was on a mission trip to Galveston rebuilding homes hit but hurricane Ike. So I spent a lot of time with 11-14 year old kids. They had smart phones, gadgets, knew about wifi and texted constantly. I learned a lot from them, so this week I thought I'd share a little of their thoughts.

They get a little rambling at certain points, but they say some interesting stuff, so take a minute to listen to the tail end of Gen Y.

Give your thoughts!

Here's the graph:

Glad to be back!

There are some marketing efforts that just fall into the category of Gimmicks. Marketers use these cheap little "tricks"  to get an action out of people (purchase, share, whatever). These tricks range from taste-testing products to sappy stories made for a few heart-string tugs. Most of us are aware of these gimmicks. We allow them work on us occasionally, but usually we ignore them.

However, there's a reason that these marketing tactics have endured. Sometimes, they work.

Twitter gives us a great example of a gimmick not only used by marketers but by parents of four-year-olds as well. You've probably even said it to someone in the pas month. It goes like this, you tell someone "don't" when you actually mean "do". In other words you tell people to do the opposite of what you want them to do, in hopes that they'll do it just because you said not to.

Twitter hopes by saying don't do it! More people will tweet and blog about their new Lists.

I'm sure you've gotten this little message on your twitter page. I'm not going to talk about lists because Twitter got exactly what they wanted, there's a million blog posts covering it. But do check out the little highlighted section on Twitter's notice.

Yeah, Twitter, way to use the oldest trick in the book.Oh and congrats, since its apparently working.

So what DO you think of Twitter lists? If you blogged about it, feel free to share.

Twitter made some subtle design changes recently and I couldn't help but comment on them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about sleek designs. Except the new bird is kinda weird. But here's my problem: why is Twitter spending money on a redesign when they could put that cash towards greater/smoother functionality or finding a monetization strategy? Or, you know, adding a "ReTweet" button, like other apps have (TweetDeck, Tweetgrid, so on...). That'd be cool. Hello?? Twitter? Are you listening?

What awesome feature would you have spent Twitter's money on?

(Also, go rate that video. I lost the password to my YouTube account and I can finally get on it after a year! I need some love.)