Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

Can bing Help Me Decide?

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What Is This bing Thing?

bing arrived on my radar with an email that said …

In August, Bing shopping and cashback will offer significantly higher rebates from hundreds of retailers to help consumers save on essential back-to-school items. Below please find a press release that highlights the survey [and] information on Bing shopping’s upcoming back-to-school promotion. Also, watch for more information about the promotion on the Bing cashback Facebook page: www.facebook.com/cashback .

I accepted an invitation to talk with Melissa Powell, Senior Product Manager, bing, about the recent research and the the new “decision” engine.

How Does bing Help My Decisions?

binglogo

The first thing Melissa said was, “The search interface hasn’t kept up with the explosion of content.” In response to that situation Microsoft wanted to cater to what people are doing online and where they are searching for it.

bing has identified four verticals as important: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. For example, in travel bing has several interactive tools to help travelers. They include …

Melissa underscored the bing quest by stating …

Bing helps you make better decisions faster, especially in the key areas of shopping, travel, health and local. One of my favorite features is Bing shopping, which helps you search, shop and save in a snap. With back-to-school just around the corner, you can save on millions of products from hundreds of the nation’s top retailers. Starting August 10 and for a limited time, we’ll offer as much as double the normal cash back from select retailers to help families save on their back-to-school essentials.

Research Before I Decide …

You can’t miss the beautiful design of the homepage the changes daily and becoming a member of bing has perks — open a bing cashback account, get bing news alerts, add bing map collections, and gain full access to the bing Webmaster Center and the bing Developer Center.

I signed up. Well, I started to, but I don’t have an MSN Live address and I’m not sure I want another id … as pretty as bing is, I decided more research was in order.

So I used bing to check bing versus google.
You can check and compare here …

I compared the cost of living between Chicago and Salt Lake City. I think Google got closer to what I might want to know.

Some folks say bing maybe offering information to sway my decision … I tried to find more examples of bias and wasn’t successful. Some folks are more clever than I.

Decide or Decide to Buy? …

From the first hello “every bing” has been about buying. The introductory email pointed to a back-to-school shoppers survey. I learned that:

At the sign up screen, I was greeted with

bingcashback


and when I hesitated to complete that step … I was received an email reminding me of the opportunity to get cash back on my purchases. It read,

Hello,
Welcome to Bing, the search that pays you back!

What I hear is not “decide,” but “decide to buy.”

Can bing Help Me Decide?

A small sign upper right on the bing home page reads:

Live Search is evolving. Tour Bing …

Can bing help me decide?

I keep remembering my mom saying “if everyone jumped off the bridge …” As Judy Shapiro said,

Maybe I am just too independently minded (and not the primary target), but I resist the notion that Microsoft technology will decide anything for me. What I really want is technology to give me the information I need to make the decision I want.

Have you tried bing? What did you find?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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SOB Business Cafe 05-29-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Art of Nonconformity
The title of this post is deliberately provocative. First of all, I know that marketers are people too, and most people are marketers of one kind or another.

But when I talk about hating marketers, you probably know what kind of marketers I’m talking about. I’m talking about car salesmen marketers who play on our emotions to get our money.

WHY PEOPLE HATE MARKETERS

Riding Dragons
A small middle-aged woman wearing a white sleeveless shirt and khaki cargo pants appeared a few yards to my right. She raised a point-and-shoot camera to a foot or so in front of her face, aimed it at the mountain, snapped a photo, then retreated to her car and left.

Meaning-Making Is Both Blessing And Curse

IttyBiz
“Win-win” is one of those annoying buzzwords that you hear over and over and over again until you just get so mad that you want to punch Ashton Kutcher repeatedly in the face. But as I’m building these new little businesses of mine, I’m coming to realize why people say “win-win” so often.

Why It’s Nice to be Nice

Unconventional Thinking
In business, when we peel away all of the code, the rules, the myths, the jargon, the Harvard case studies, all we have to do is to find a code breaker: which is a single thing that if we do it over and over again, it will always be profitable.

The Genius Of Ockham’s Razor

The Fluent Self
Okay, so when people ask me about business-ey things, and — more specifically — how my own thing has gotten all biggified, I have to talk about the weird magical power of being yourself.

And not just being yourself, but being yourself out loud.

Even if that means that people know that I am a total mess talk to ducks, have monsters and completely fall apart sometimes.

To hell with transparency.

Related ala carte selections include

From the Mind of Neenz
As I type this, I can hear my Mother’s voice as she delivered the news to me over the phone. As I type this, I recall the words of my dear friend Jan in an email, “Oh Neen, I almost want to ask…are you sure?” As I type this, I can hear his laughter as if he’s only down the hall in his bedroom. As I type this I am reminded, remembering is part of healing.

Remembering is Part of Healing

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

SOB Business Cafe 05-22-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Dosh Dosh
Experts have talked about this before. How many times have you read about the importance of ‘adding value’ for your audience? How many times have you read about ‘building trust’ with your readers/prospects?

An Essential Marketing Principle: Give Before You Try to Get

TwitTip
Now that Twitter has several million active users, it’s no surprise to see such a variety of people discussing a wide range of topics. But while the content of all those tweets may be so different, they ultimately fall roughly into five categories.

The Fine Art Of Balancing Your Twitter Conversations

Less Ordinary
Most Tuesdays I pay my grandparents a visit, and while I’m there I tend to take quite a few pics in my grandad’s garden. When I was there last week, as well as taking lots more photos of the beautiful flowers growing in the borders, pots and window boxes, I also took some shots in the greenhouse:

Grandad’s Greenhouse

ChrisG
The way that UsefulTools is differentiating is through focus. By sacrificing the news, gossip and editorial, and aiming just for the review slice of the pie, they will stand out. Also, and this is just my hope, they will avoid the echo-chamber and TechMeme chasing behavior of some of the other blogs out there!

UsefulTools Critique

Related ala carte selections include

White Trash Mom
Mikwright Cards & Gifts is sponsoring a weekly contest every Thursday here on whitetrashmom.com!

Thursday Trashy Thursday: Meme with a Twist!

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

SOB Business Cafe 05-15-09

Filed Under Great Finds, Marketing, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

The Buzz Bin
Dale Carnegie’s principles have stood the test of time because they are about fostering better relations amongst people. And the classic mistake with social media is to treat it like a mass communications vehicle, when it’s a conversational form that builds relationships. Social media is about a larger community and its concerns, as opposed to a litany of messages. There is no better set of guidelines for this then “Friends.”

Friends: Principles Applied 80 Years Later to Social Networking

A VC
The WSJ gave its journalists some rules about conduct in social media this week according to Editor and Publisher.

Most of them are good common sense rules for everyone using social media. But there are several that I think are wrong and should be rethought. Here are four “rules” that I think should be reconsidered and why.

Social Media Rules For Journalists

Mashable
But there’s so much info and chatter coming in through social media that it can overwhelm you, eat up your time, and ruin your productivity.

Simplifying will help you stay in touch, and continue to participate in the conversation, without losing sight of your mission and the important work you need to get done.

HOW TO: Simplify Your Social Media Routine

Social Media Explorer
Last week, David and I got the opportunity to hear Geno Church of Brains on Fire speak about word of mouth marketing and social media, courtesy the Louisville AMA and Social Media Club Louisville. He ended the presentation with the story of the role social media played in a pivotal, scary event in his own life as a parent. It got the gears turning in my head.

Keeping safe in social media

Marketing Pilgrim
Fizzle in 2009
If you’ve not stopped popping champagne since we published Forrester’s predictions for social media marketing, you might need the Alka-Seltzer after you see eMarketer’s contrary estimates.

eMarketer Predicts Social Media Advertising Will Fizzle in 2009

Related ala carte selections include

Chrisg
All around the world people are very excited about Social Media Success Summit 2009 — the first major online event dedicated to helping you successfully market your business with sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. More than 500 people have already registered. Now you have the exclusive chance to win two valuable seats to the event for no cost!

Win Tickets to Social Media Success Summit 2009!

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

SOB Business Cafe 05-08-09

Filed Under Great Finds, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Sonia of Copyblogger
Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz is a genuinely remarkable voice in a sea of sameness. She’s a fantastic example of how content marketing can be used as the backbone of a real business that makes real money.

Content Marketing Gets Real: Sonia Interviews Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz

Seth’s Blog
Most marketers are organized around more. More share. More customers.

And if you want to do that fast, it means marketing to strangers. Strangers that don’t care about you, don’t trust you and aren’t listening to you.

Strangers and friends

The Fluent Self
So it kind of seemed like it might be time to a) pull back, b) add to the general knowledge base… and c) just try to give you a better sense of what these three methodologies/philosophies are. And why they aren’t really always that good for you.

Destuckification 101

iJump
One point from the Q&A roundup from Marketing Now bears deeper exploration: Online communities require investment in people.

What makes a good community manager?

Rick Mahn
That’s what lies before today’s C-Suite executives if they choose to explore it. What I’m talking about here, of course, is really about relationships. With the advent of social computing in the second half of this decade, the power has shifted from producers and marketers to people.

Undiscovered Opportunities of the C-Suite

Related ala carte selections include

Being Five

Bounce

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.
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