And the Oscar goes to…(who the Premier might have picked)

If you missed this cool article in the Bermuda Sun, check it out now. A who’s who of Bermuda picks their favorite films…and Dr. Brown’s choice may surprise you…Sen. Burch’s too.
A lot of Godfather and Westerns fans in Bermuda, and not a one picked my all-time fav.—Gone With The Wind.

How Facebook Makes $$$

Have you heard of “performance-based advertising”?
It’s apparently a big part of how Facebook could be on track to make
over $1 billion this year!

Other than F-book ads, Google’s AdSense is a good example of performance-based advertising. What happens is advertisers don’t pay for exposure as they would in magazines and on TV, but rather for the PEOPLE Google sends to the advertisers’ sites.
It’s a great way to advertise your products and services, as a growing number of Bermuda companies are finding out…

In Facebook’s case, advertisers can choose multiple places– countries  or cities to target a specific ad campaign at, getting rid of the need to have multiple campaigns for different places in the world.

You can also target ads on F-book to age groups, cultures/languages spoken, married/unmarrieds, interests/hobbies etc.

We Have A New Price For Websites: Free!!

We have started offering templated Wordpress websites for free to Bermuda small businesses! Your website will be hosted on our fast and reliable servers and you can edit the content yourself with no technical skills. You can choose from 1000+ unique templates and we will integrate your logo into the template for you. All you have to worry about is writing the content for your business and pasting it in.  Your website will show up in Google when people search for your business.

Full details are available here: http://bermudainternetmarketing.com/services/free-web-design-services-no-catch

There are some terms and conditions but I think you will find it is a great deal for anyone that does not want a highly customized corporate website.

Terms and Conditions

• Cannot be used for personal websites, must be a registered Bermuda small business
• Website will be hosted on our servers and our hosting costs $50/month (this is cheaper than average for Bermuda)
• 1/2 an hour of free support is included per month, technical support and additional work beyond this is billable at our normal rate
• You must use one of 1000+ Wordpress templates – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
• Your website will contain a small link to our company near the footer
• Making technical changes such as adding and removing emails will be subject to small, reasonable, one-time fees, a full printout is available

Are we totally crazy?  Let us know in the comments below.

Are U A Cheapskate?

Just in time for Valentine’s, I found a 10%-off coupon for East End Florist at this great new Bda site:

• www.cheapskate.bm

Some good cashback-at-closing real estate deals too, and coupons for discounts on bikes, children’s clothes and more.
Save it as a favourite!

5 Reasons for PR to use Social Networks

From: Fellow blogger Nathan Egan http://www.examiner.com/x-809-Publicity-Examiner~y2009m3d13-Five-reasons-to-Twitter-LinkedIn-or-Facebook-The-new-PR

Below are his five reasons why every business needs to learn to optimize the new PR of today for tomorrow:

1. They are free! Yep, nearly all social programming is available at no cost to the user. Egan coined the phrase “freesourcing” to describe the act of leveraging free web-based resources for your business.?

2. Easy to learn the basics but if you are too busy to figure out the advanced stuff or want it customized for your business, find a service that can show you through webinars, conference calls or online tutorials. Take this seriously, it is your business.

3. Recognize that your connectivity in cyberspace is your virtual real estate and it is accessible by the world 24×7. Strategic use can help build your equity overnight while poor use can be a liability.

4. Stay ahead of your competitors. Read as much as possible about how other businesses are using social media and Web 2.0 technology – be creative and think outside the box to apply their usage back to your own business even if it seems completely unrelated. Everyday new and valuable ideas for using these tools are created.?

5. Participation brings ROI. Get involved! Don’t just join or sign-up and hope that it will do something for you. Built into the word network is the word “work.”

Swizzle Secrets

Great publicity on YouTube for Jay Correia and his Swizzle Inn, and the famous Swizzle…on awesome independent travel site www.voyage.tv.
Bda salsa and snorkelling too!
http://www.youtube.com/user/VoyageChannel#p/a/u/0/OYmiJaXnSW4

Calling all cable TV geeks…and users

Got missing or snowy channels? Like to TiVo, or hey, can WOW users TiVo? Need to know about Amazon unBox. Got questions about cablecards? Check out the TiVo Bermuda Facebook page for invaluable information on keeping up on cable TV in Bermuda. Experts answer questions almost as soon as they post, and users share great tips. Why didn’t the cable providers think of this??

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18042518256

Also, check out Michael Branco’s website too. http://www.geek.bm/tivo

Free Websites for Bermuda Companies – Google Sites

At Bermuda Internet Marketing, we create online marketing programs that perform and this takes substantial time and effort. Therefore for small clients that just need an easy, searchable place online to post information we try to steer them towards any of the great online services available.

Google has just launched a new application called Google Sites at http://sites.google.com. The interface is very easy to follow and you can quickly start posting images, videos and content for yourself online. We recommend it for Bermudian very small companies because chances are if the content is labeled properly, it will show up in Google search results. This could be useful for any small company that is not overly brand focused such as a Bermuda Taxi Cab, Bermuda Bed and Breakfast or Bermuda Painting.

Display advertising is incredibly inefficient

I think the biggest problem is how online display ads are sold.  The current setup exists because of the history of how it evolved and the lack of speed with which these organizations have been able to adapt.  The publishers continue to sell their inventory on websites through the same inefficient chain of phone calls between account managers and clients just as they did 50 years ago, when they were selling print media and that process actually made sense.   On the reciprocating end the agencies are buying the media for clients, using all of the same tedious insertion orders and other old fashioned procedures that they always have.  The agencies keep hiring media buyers and the publishers keep hiring online sales people and the process goes on. Read the rest of this entry »

TechWeek 2009

Bermuda TECHWEEK 2009 was a lot of fun. I got to get an idea of the local talent and competition. I met some cool people, namely Brenton Richardson from BermyNet.

It was a very well organized event and I think the Ministry of E-Commerce did a wonderful job.