I'm Ken Zweigel. I'm president and founder of DRIVE, a search engine optimization company founded in 2000. As a former president of the Indianapolis, Indiana chapter of the Business Marketing Association, I believe in the principles of integrated marketing communications, so all of our efforts are based on strategic branding initiatives designed to create a steady flow of qualified leads and sales.

My background includes acting (which meant I was basically a waiter and bartender in Manhatten for a decade enjoying a life of decadence and debuachery), hospitality management, sales and service training, on-air radio experience, radio advertising sales, video production, marketing plan development, and website development, which led me to SEO.

My goal for this blog is to provide a unique perspctive on the impact of search engine marketing and how to integrate it with traditional forms of advertising and corporate communications. I also plan on commenting on the general state of marketing and the media, including all forms of communications, from broadcasting to one-on-one networking. I look forward to your responses, so please join in the dialogue.  

It's the eve of a the first BlogIN sponsored by the Smaller Indiana social networking site. I've been a bad blogger, having posted only a few blog entries in almost four months - and this Compendium Blogware ain't cheap.

Therefore, I've also been a negligent owner of an Indianapolis web design company that focuses on Search Engine Optimization, because this blog software is intended to help with organic rankings and I've used a considerable chunk of annual marketing budget to test this software to see if it can help improve my clients organic rankings.

Anyway, I will be attending the BlogIn unconference in a few hours primarily to help inspire me to regularly contribute to this blog, and to steal a few good ideas if possible. Ultimately, I just need a regular blogging routine and the disipline to stick to it, but who has time to set that up and do it?

I intend to develop a content format, to allow readers to know what to expect, and a regular posting schedule, so readers know when to expect it. Maybe I'll hire a ghost writer. Wish me luck. I'll keep you posted.

In an article about Toshiba pulling the plug on HD DVD, a spokesperson for the company commented that "Marketing was a weak point for Toshiba." That is the understatement of the year.
 
 In the continual discussion about how to properly market to today's consumer - whether offline or on the web through banner ads, PPC advertising, search engine optimization, viral marketing or otherwise - one thing seems obvious to me with the demise of HD DVD: Toshiba's marketing department did an absolutely horrendous job of choosing a name for their product.
 
 From day one, HD DVD didn't stand a chance against Blu-ray merely because we like to say "Blu-ray" and we hate to say "HD DVD." It does not matter now that it may actually have been a better and more useful technology for the masses, because we'll never know as a a result of bad branding.
 
 I try to not be critical of others, especially in areas that are not my specialty, but the victory of VHS over Betamax decades ago is not a clue as to how to name a product for today's marketplace. That should be obvious to any creative director.
 
 The clues are everywhere as to what types of catchy names have been attached to successful new brands in the last decade: Google, iPod, Starbuck's, Scion, MySpace, Facebook, Panera's Bread, Under Armour, and many more. These names flow off your tongue and are pleasant to utter and repeat over and over. I iPod this; I Google that; I Facebook you; I MySpace me; and Under Armour for all.
 
 Not too many recently introduced brands that I can think of have initials as their main focus. The MD in WebMD was already a universally used acronym, so it brought recognition and value to that brand's name. With FUBU, you pronounce that name like a cool word.
 
 Congratulations to Sony for finally winning a format war and getting the Betamax monkey off their back. Pretty soon "Blu-ray" will be a verb that describes the action of shooting hi-def video footage. "I was there and I blu-rayed it!"
 
 So, when you want to introduce a new product, be sure to remember the lesson of HD DVD, and stay away from a long string of initials for your brand, which needs to convey a warm and fuzzy emotional relationship with your target audience, not an initialed, commoditized, and cold connection.

As part of our efforts to promote my Indianapolis search engine optimization company, we've become a full-season sponsor of the BAM Racing #49 Sprint Cup car. I have already benefitted from the association with the team, beacause it is a natural fit for a company called DRIVE. What I discovered today, when the car failed to qualify for the Daytona 500, is that when you throw your support behind an underdog in the big leagues, you better be prepared for dissappointment.

Of course, the only reason I was watching the race during the middle of a work day was to see how my team did. I would never consider such a distraction otherwise. In addition to the down side of missing the show on Sunday, I discovered that during the upcoming season I won't be able to actually enjoy the races from my usual fan's perspective because of my involvement with the team.

So be sure when you commit to being a sponsor of an event or organization that you understand your perspective will immediately change as a result, and that your ability to innocently appreciate that entity as an outside observer will forver change.

We'll see how this sponsorship deal turns out as far as our marketing strategy and tactics development are concerned, but at least during the one-year evaluation period it gives me something to write about on a continual basis during the season. I guess I'll be rooting for the other underdogs during the race, including Indianapolis native John Andretti, but my thoughts will be on the #49 car making the race the following week.

If your a race fan, be sure to enter our VIP Race Weekend Sweepstakes for a chance to spend an unforgettable weekend with the #49 team in 2009.

May he rest in peace. It could be said that with the passing of Karl Ehrhardt, blog heaven receives the original blogger as its initial resident. Who is Karl Ehrhardt and why do I think of him as the original blogger?

For those of you who are (1) baseball fans, (2) old enough and (3) from the New York City area, or a Mets fans for some reason that is known by only you and your therapist, then you might know him as the Sign Man of Shea Stadium.

For almost two decades from the Mets's earliest days, Sign Man used his box seat near third base to post short, almost instantaneous, highly-poignant, and often-humorous opinions about what just occurred on the field. And with the Mets, that could be just about anything from absurd to amazing.

In the pre-Internet age, Frank used his advertising agency background to conceive and create simple block-letter signs, which he held above his head with both arms extended high for all within the stadium to see.

Eventually, as television gained a bigger role in disseminating baseball games, Sign Man's opinions were broadcast nationwide; globally during those few Miracle Mets championship seasons. The TV cameramen knew to focus on him after any significant moment in a game, so his opinions eventually became as much a part of the flavor of games at Shea as the hot dogs and beer.

Perhaps because of their instantaneous and brief nature, his messages might be considered more akin to Twittering than blogging, but if I just wrote about Twitter, or the main topic of this search engine optimization blog, then I would not be able to take advantage of the keywords "blog," "blogger," and "blogging."

So, a memorial virtual toast and tip of a Mets cap go out to the innovative Frank Ehrhardt, a familiar face and spokesperson from my past, and one of the founding fathers of Internet Age - a world where everyone's opinion matters in the global conversation that connects us all.  We'll miss you, Sign Man, and we'll see you someday in blog heaven.

 It must been have a humbling experience for Microsoft to admit defeat with its decision to takeover Yahoo! as its last-gasp attempt to remain relevant. As we SEO's know, relevancy is the key to suucess in the search engine marketing arena, and Microsoft has been anything but for several years. (And I'll save my comments about Windows Vista for another day.)

So, what does this mean for marketers who rely on organic rankings through optimization and/or Pay-Per Click (PPC) advertsing to generate web traffic? In the short run, not much. In the long run, probably not much either except for a possible slight decrease in rates as competition heats up.
 
Though this planned merger makes for good headlines and commentary, the bottom line for marketers is that success on the search engines has always been based on the basic principles of good old Marketing 101: get the right message to the right person at the right time and place. That won't change, no matter who owns what search engine or what percentage of search traffic uses Google or any of its competitors.

The combined Microsoft/Yahoo! search engine platform may prove to be a more formidable competitor than they've been recently as separate entities, which may reduce the cost of advertising, but regardless of where or how much you spend on your SEO, PPC, and other online advertising campaigns, you still need to focus on the tried and true aspects of successful marketing.

I'm not going to spend too much time focused on the analysis of pundits about the back-room politics and finances of this proposed merger, but instead I will keep my eye on the changes that Google will start to make as a result, because those will have a bigger impact on my clients' success until the merger dust settles and becomes a permanent part of the search engine landscape.

I'm embarrassed to admit, but I'm a virgin. Not that type. A blog virgin. My head has been so buried in the SEO-sand for five years that I have not had time to explore for my own purposes much of the other online worlds that now make up the search engine marketing arena. All of my efforts have been on my clients' behalf up until now, so it's time to make up for lost time. Stay tuned for more than you'll ever want to know about SEO.