illuminea is excited to announce a 3-part Hands-On Social Media Workshop for Businesses on July 20, 27, and August 3, 2011. Each session will be four hours, and we will get hands-on at every stage with tools and techniques for optimizing your social media activity. UPDATE: After posting about the Social Media Workshop, we received requests to give an additional seminar on SEO - search engine optimization. So, we added a One Day Seminar on “SEO – The Fundamentals of Optimizing your Site for Search”.  If you register for both the Social Media Workshop and the One Day SEO Seminar, you'll get a 15% discount on both! To register, click here   About the workshop We will be covering: Key concepts of ...

SphinnCon is coming back to Israel on January 9, 2011, and it’s a conference that I think any one who is serious about search marketing should seriously consider attending. What is SphinnCon? Have you ever heard of SMX? Well, SMX (Search Marketing Expo) is “the [my bold] original and best search marketing event.” We in Israel are lucky since SphinnCon is a unique SMX-related event that takes place outside of the US, and as far as I know it so far has ...

More and more studies are showing that internet users do not engage with conventional online ads. Users have developed a type of blindness to the flashing, blinking, google-type ads that clutter pages, and no matter how invasive and annoying the ads are, we have learnt to ignore them. So marketers are desperately searching for new ways to advertise to customers, one of which is the strategy of authenticity. This is when marketers create a video, or some other marketing piece, that looks real but has actually been carefully staged. In most cases, the marketer lets the user in on the secret by telling them that the ad is fake, either directly or with hints. However, one marketer recently was so successful that ...

I'm excited to announce the launch of a new course I'm giving on blogging and social media marketing strategies. About the course The new web, also known as web 2.0, is changing the way we communicate. With people spending more and more time online as active participants in the consumption and generation of content, companies and brands who wish to engage with online customers must adopt a new way of thinking. "Corporate Blogging and Social Media" is a 3-day seminar that will take place on Thursday June 5, June 12, and June 19, 2008. During the course, you'll gain a solid background in blogging and social media, start your own blog and write ...

SphinnCon Israel is sold out! SphinnCon Israel is a SphinnCon networking event focused on search and internet marketing, and is taking place this coming Tuesday, February 5 at the Jerusalem College of Technology (also known as Machon Lev). This event is exciting thanks to the incredible lineup, with representatives from well-known international companies like Google, TechCrunch, Kenshoo and Yedda (see my previous interview with Yedda's Lior Haner, who will be speaking at the conference), and thanks to the location: Jerusalem! For once I don't have ...

There are so many social media sites and tools out there, that it's hard to know which to pay attention to, and which to ignore. Also, how do we use them effectively and still retain time to get some real work done? A recent discussion took place on the CIWI (Connecting Independent Writers in Israel) mailing list about how to start a blog, and whether one should start one at all. One writer was of the opinion that blogs are passe, and that users should concentrate on microblogging mediums, like Tumblr and Twitter. In my opinion, the ...

Burger King has hit viral video payday with their new Whopper Freakout viral video. In the video, customers at Burger King in Las Vegas are told that the Whopper has been discontinued. They are shocked and even outraged, or as the website puts it - they "freaked out."Viral video success is basically about getting lots of people to talk about your thing, whatever it is. In this case, Burger King has succeeded since their videos on YouTube have been viewed thousands of times, and many people, myself now included, have written about their stunt.However, it's one thing to get people ...

Here is the ultimate example of the value of good marketing and packaging: bling H2O, which is basically glorified water in a really pretty bottle, that costs as much as some people in the world make in a year. People pay more for water already when it's in the form of mineral water. But in that case, there are qualitative arguments that are made about the taste and quality of water. Whether these arguments are right or wrong is anybody's guess, but at least people are paying for quality. With Bling H2O, it's all about the bottle and the brand. Yes, bling H2O touts their nine-step purification process and their gold medal for ...

If you are a designer or provide design services to clients, you have probably encountered the clients who look at your finely crafted works of art and say "Why is there all that white space? Fill it up!" or "Please use this beautiful logo that was created by my nephew as the basis for your design." We know what those logos look like - like they were designed by a nephew! I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are some principles that do impact on whether a design is successful or not. Putting all the text in Times New Roman ...

It's that time of year again: the next Entrepreneur Breakfast meeting is coming up, and we've got an amazing speaker lined up for you. Ruth Shlossman, Principal at the Washington DC-based negotiation consulting firm, Watershed Associates, will be the guest speaker at the upcoming Entrepreneur Breakfast meeting on Monday, September 17, 2007. Ruth will be talking about “Best Negotiating Practices…Learn the basic, universal, key negotiating practices that create a win-win outcome.” Watershed Associates provides consultative training in negotiation skills worldwide, and has served global corporations such as Coca-Cola, General Electric, NASA, and Rolls Royce, to name just a few on ...