Late Night TV — It was 12:15pm EST last Friday, July 11, and David Letterman’s Late Show had just gone to a commercial. You might wonder the relevance especially related to Grapethinking? But I feel I must tell you about the absurdly ridiculous guest I saw pitching a product that deserves to be shunned and whose creator/promoter deserves to be sent to one of the deeper rings in Dante’s Inferno. Her name is known throughout the Internet and entertainment circles like any STD in a free walk-in clinic, haven’t guessed yet? Its Paris Hilton, a woman who I attribute the downfall of what is left of American Culture and in this instance it is no different, it is probably even more apparent. Ms. Hilton in all of her infinite wisdom has thought it would be a good idea to market the brand RICH Prosecco (an Italian grape used to make sparkling wine) in a can because it’s sexy. Don’t get me wrong I get the whole new age sexy marketing idea, it’s a damn good one, but putting sparkling wine in a can is like drinking Don Perignon out of a Dixie Cup… not to mention the hangover that will surely follow. I can’t imagine what the Italians think of this blatant slap in the face; some poor smuck (pardon my Yiddish) who has never made it in the world of wine probably got offered a lot of money to sell out. Of course the next product she presented was on the go hair extensions called clipin go. David was sarcastically heckling her the whole time… gotta love him.

What do you think about this change in wine marketing? Does a can make wine more sexy and appealing in a club atmosphere?

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I was browsing through some old notes, and found this post by Ryan Opaz at Catavino talking about their site stats, and figuring out the reality behind pageviews in the wine industry. The post had spawned a great discussion, and in preparing a response, I decided should just write a post about site stats.

Are you tracking visitors to your website? If the answer is NO, then you have to catch up with the times. If you owned a hardware store, and I could tell you information about:

• who your customers are
• how many customers you have
• how they find you
• how long each of them are in your store
• what they are looking at
• how long someone is in a particular section
• is this their first visit
• what they bought
• at what point did they decide to leave

Would you not practically beg me for this? Read the rest of this entry »

So you are ready to start advertising on Facebook?… Great! This simple tutorial should help you to get your ad set-up in less than 15 minutes.

Step 1 - What are you promoting? - Login to Facebook, then go to the Create Ad page and enter the url you want your traffic to go to. (For our clients, we customize a landing page for each ad in an effort to better convert the traffic). Read the rest of this entry »

What do you do if you want to show your ads to single females between the ages of 22 and 26, who are interested in Jack Johnson, traveling, and enjoy the hit TV series “Lost”. - Answer - Facebook Advertising

You can only narrow your targeted advertising down so far when using some of the traditional online advertising strategies. Google Adwords allows you to target specific keywords (a proven method), and they will use IP addresses to geo-target your ads to people in specific areas. You can roughly determine the demographics of a particular website for your CPM (cost-per-impression) advertising based on content..e.g. the most frequent visitors of dating sites are single males between 30 and 45 years of age, and they are interested in …

Like many advertising services, Facebook offers you the option to pay on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis, which means exactly that. You only pay when someone clicks on the ad. You can also choose the CPM method, which can save you money and offer more overall exposure for your $. They launched the program in November, and have received both positive and negative criticisms. Read the rest of this entry »

After our recent post highlighting a recent duplicate content issue we faced, we decided it would be a good time to start giving out free advice for building your web rankings.

One of our most commonly requested services is web site optimization. Unfortunately (and fortunately) web developers are just now starting to implement a better practice of building sites to be search engine friendly. As web development continues to be outsourced, many developers just don’t feel like putting in that little bit of extra effort that truly does go a long way.

You may be familiar with some of the following issues, as I’m trying to keep this list simple, but hopefully there are a few gems that may help you on your way to the top. If you have any questions, don’t be shy to comment and we’ll help in every way we can. Read the rest of this entry »