Viral Marketing

First, who is this Plain City Auction we speak of? Well, for short, they're one of our clients and great friends of ours. We've been working with them for years. But, in more detail, they're an auction house located in Plain City, Ohio, which is just outside of Columbus. They usually sell antiques furniture and other various antiques.

What is a preferred partner? Well, we're still not sure either. Infact, we kind of wonder if they even know yet. All we really know about it at this point is that they're essentially looking to cross-promote other local vendors goods and services. They always have a large turnout at their auctions, so it's actually a surprise that this didn't happen sooner. But our understanding is that they're looking for other local or related businesses that would like to promote their company to a large number of people for little cost.

We've heard that they're having large-format print adverting produced for their preferred partners that they'll have prominently on display at the auctions. Since we do their website hosting, they've already approached us about providing similar online advertisements through their website and their auction newsletter emails. We're pretty sure that they'll also be printing advertisements in their snail-mail auction newsletter and that they're open to other suggestions if you're interested in becoming one of their preferred partners.

If this sounds like an advertising outlet you'd like to pursue, please visit http://plaincityauction.com/contact/ to get in touch with the auction's owners

Did you know about Google Profiles? I didn't. We encourage our employees to post regular contributions on websites. I spend most of my time photo archiving Greenville, NC on Google Maps using Google's Panoramio or relocating misplaced eye droppers on Google Maps; but that's another story.

But back to the main point, when we've posted comments on these blogs, usually you have to create an account and you're encouraged to setup a profile on their site. When I've been contributing to Google, however, who knew it was me? Nobody. Because I hadn't setup a Google Profile.

One of the things I can't stand is going to Google and not being able to find out about a place. For example, when I travel, I don't necessarily plan out the entire trip minute-for-minute. But I do like to have a general idea of what my possibilities are for when I get there; that way I don't waste time looking for something, but rather, I can enjoy myself.

One of the first things I do when I am planning a trip is go to Firefox, type in google.com, and start searching for stuff to do in the town that I am traveling to. For example, I'll type in "restaurant myrtle beach sc" and browse through the Google Business Listings or browse through a couple websites that rate or suggest restaurants. Then I do the same thing for hotels, entertainment, etc.