I’ve recently been doing online Marketing consulting with an ecommerce client. They’re an old school ecommerce company with not very sexy products. Never-the-less they’ve been around for a longtime and will be going public soon. So, as a part of the process I put together a list of 5 ideas for their internal marketing team to review and hopefully implement or improve. I thought I would share those 5 things here. I know that most ecommerce companies do most or all of these, but you’d be surprised at how many “old school” companies that are out there that do not.

1. Create a corporate blog, and brand it in a way that reflects your main site but also gives you the appearance of being an expert (which you should be). This is a good way to have an online presence that will possibly get you a new audience and get bloggers talking about you. Update it daily.
2. Blog marketing: make a list of all of the authority bloggers that write about products in your niche and spend an hour or less a day participating in their conversations. It’s important to do this without spamming them. If you participate in the conversation you’ll get more respect.
3. Be diligent about making sure sale items or breaking product/ technology news gets in front of the Digg, reddit and other social news sites audience. This could be huge. It might even be beneficial to do some sort monthly “overstock” item sale that’s by design just for the digg crowd. Everyone likes good deals.
4. Boost up your affiliate marketing: I’m sure you are already doing some sort affiliate deal through CJ or others. In my experience, affiliate marketing is one of the best and least expensive ways to get your products out there.
5. Be creative and unique: It would be awesome if you could create some sort of “contextual” ad network just for your products. Bloggers would eat it up, as they are always looking for ways to monetize their blogs.

The important thing to remeber is that all of these will work, but you have to be diligent and understand that it doesn’t happen overnight.

Here’s the deal… If you have a 3rd generation ipod that’s currently on the “fritz” you can take it back to the Apple store and they will give you 80gig ipod classic for $71. Apparently for a limited time apple doesn’t have any spare parts for 3rd genetation ipods so they decided to give everyone the upgrade deal. I took mine in on Sunday, under the advice of an Apple employee and was in and out less than 10 minutes. My “battery” was the problem with mine and they didn’t even turn it on to see if it worked. So if you have 3rd Gen iPod take it on down to the Apple store to get your new 80gig classic. If someone was enterpriseing enough I’m sure you could purchase a broken 3rd generation for next to nothing and then take to Apple for a new ipod classic. But hurry up because this will only last a couple of weeks at the most.

Digg lunched some new feature today that makes them a bit more like Facebook and myspace. They’ve added 50 new features, but most revolve around social networking.

• Digg will notify you via email when certain activities happen, such as when someone adds you as a friend or a story you submit becomes popular. You can control what emails you want to receive in the Email Settings section of your Digg User Profile.
• You can easily find your friends’ Profiles on Digg by searching for them by their email address. If you don’t want to enable others to search for your Digg Profile by your email address, or if you want to manage what personal information to display in your Digg Profile, you can reflect this in your Privacy Settings.

You can check out their blog for a video rundown of 5 of the new features.

Lots of folks are waiting to hear from Apple about the latest and greatest iPod’s and iPhone’s. So far a new ipod Nano and new touch screen design for the iPods, including WiFi have been announced. Get real time news from CrunchGear.

pic via crunchgear

With all the iPhone hype ( i don’t have one) of late, lots of companies are optimizing their content so that it works with the iPhone. Applications such as Digg, Meebo and many other are rushing to get their content and services in front of iPhone users. The other big thing for the iPhone is video content. Apple started out by showing commercials with Youtube content optimized for the iPhone. I suspect that short format video content will be a huge winner for iPhone users, assuming the AT&T’s EDGE network performs. One of my favorite originally produced video networks, On Networks, has high-def on demand content. They have shows that range from Cooking and Health to Comedy. Now you can can check their shows out on your iPhone. Video content optimized for the iPhone is going to explode.

Ok, I was never a big fan of Braodcast.com but they were unique at the time. On Mark Cuban’s blog yesterday he had a post on Broadcast.com and that it was now 8 years old. He had a video promo form Broadcast.com that was pretty funny to watch. I just thought I would share it with you here.

On Monday (June 25) I went to my first DemoCamp. It was at a great coffee shop on the south side of town called Cafe Caffeine. There were 5 presenters but the overall turn out was pretty small.

1. Jason Howell - SelfBookIt
2. David James - CommunityGoals | Raise money and find solutions for community problems and goals.
3. Paul Walhus - SearchSlides
4. Ash Maurya - BoxCloud | Dead-simple file sharing
5. Mark Phillip - AreYouWatchingThis

All presenters did a really good job of walking everyone through there product. The two products that stood out the most to me were BoxCloud and AreYouWatchingthis. Both are very polished and the guys behind them are very sharp. Boxcloud is a file sharing application that is one of the best I’ve seen. Their product is ideal for people in the creative field, as you can send large files to clients or other members of your team and have them proof the file and highlight edits without downloading the file. Go to boxcloud.com to find out more. AreYouWatchingThis.com is a sports alert community. You can think of it as a digg for live sports. It’s pretty cool because you can alerts on “exciting” games, as they’re happening. If you’re a sports fan, AreYouWatchingThis.com is a must. They hope to one day have an integration with Tivio witch will put them into some serious money.

Overall DemoCamp was a lot of fun and I look froward to the next. You can view some photos from the event here.

Ilalian eyewear maker Luxottica Group S.P.A. has purchased Oakley, Inc in an all cash deal valued at $2.1 billion. I had no idea that Oakley was worth that much. Read more here.

I remember the days that oakley frogskins were the in thing. Now, I guess it’s just Oakley that’s the in thing.

With all the talk about the iPhone and everyone chomping at the bit to get one. I wonder if it’s really worth the expense to get one, especially the first generation? For a couple of years now I’ve been looking for the perfect portable device that fits all my needs:

• I take a daily photo with my Casio EX-240 and post it over on my personal site (www.facesofme.com). So I need a device that I can take a decent hi-res photo (2-3 megapixels) with an removable memory card.
• I listen to music all day long, whether it’s at my computer or with my iPod while I’m on the move. So, it would be nice to have a device that could at least old a few hundred songs and makes it easy to sync with my computer.
• I need a phone. I don’t have a land line phone so I depend on my cell phone for phone communication. I usually don’t go over 600 minutes month.
• The device needs to be small enough to fit in my front pocket, comfortably. And, be tough enough to handle regular daily abuse.
• Currently, I don’t check the web on my phone, nor do I use it for email. However, I would like to, especially to look up info on the fly and keep up with important email.
• Ok, so this is the biggie that keeps me looking around. If I had a phone that met all of the above needs, which there are several of them out there. I would need it to have a battery life that equals that of my current iPod or camera. I’d be satisfied with 8-10 hours.
• The last thing is that I need to feel like I’m not getting rapped by my mobile carrier. The perfect plan would be some sort of ala carte that allows me to pick services and hours based on my needs. I currently spend a little more than $45 per month with Sprint and am happy with the price (service is another thing).

So, looking at the iPhone in comparison to what I’m looking for, it doesn’t look to bad. I think there are only two downsides to the iPhone that I can find:

1. The cost, it’s damn expensive, 4GB ($499) or 8GB ($599) and the service plans are more expense than normal.
2. It looks as if apple is trying to force you to use iTune for music and movies. I don’t use iTunes now and don’t plan on starting anytime soon. I want the flexibility to either, manually move media to the phone or sync other software (Winamp or Songbird for example). Unless I’m mistaken, the iPhone is restricting this.

Conclusion- I think when the iPhone hits the stores next week, there will be a mad scramble for the Apple Fan kids to get the phone. There will be a supply issue and I’m sure some will be sold on ebay for twice what they’re worth. But, after the smoke clears, Apple will come out with a second generation iPhone by early next year that’s better and cheaper. Additionally there will be new phones from competitors that will rival the iPhone functionality. I think I’m going to take the wait and see stance.

Techcrunch is reporting that Yahoo CEO Terry Semel has resigned. You can read more at Techcrunch or MercuryNews.com.