In addition to today's Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for April 17, 2007:

  Corporate Blogging Round-up  [Various Sources]

Several articles dealing with corporate blogging caught my eye today.  First of all, Patrick Schaber [The Lonely Marketer] talks about several things to consider when launching a corporate blog.  A lot of companies jump into blogging without enough planning in the initial stages.  By thinking about, and planning for, these aspects of your company's blog, you can avoid some of the issues other companies have run into.  Next, Lee Odden [Online Marketing Blog] talks about some of the issues his company ran into during the launch, progression, and maturation of their blog.  These two posts go hand-in-hand because they both bring up a lot of important, albeit often-forgotten, aspects of blogging.  And finally, Mark Collier [Marketing Profs] looks at what you can do if you've already launched a corporate blog… and it's not working out the way you'd have hoped it would.  So there you have it… planning, avoiding, and fixing… all in one.

  Got a Question About SEO?  [Graywolf's SEO Blog]

The folks behind the SEO Class Blog have started taking questions from readers.  Post a question and, if selected, get a response from four prominent SEOs at the same time.  Michael Gray, Rae Hoffman, Todd Malicoat, and Greg Niland will each answer a user-submitted question once a week.  That's a pretty nice deal because you're not getting one answer… you're getting four different perspectives from four different SEOs.  If you've got a great question, take advantage of what amounts to the Internet's version of one-on-one time with some of the experts.

  Google's Stock No Longer A Superstar  [InsideGoogle]

Think $500 is a lot of money for one share of stock?  With a few calculations, Nathan Weinberg has determined that stock in Mountain View would be worth closer to $900 if Google hadn't devalued each share by issuing more.  Why did they issue more stock?  Acquisitions and stock deals with other companies.  So the question Weinberg is asking is simple:  does Google owe investors an explanation for why it's been issuing more stock to buy up other businesses when it could have been returning those profits back to investors?

  Microsoft's Tellme Launches Three New Mobile Search Services  [Search Engine Journal]

One of the reasons Microsoft acquired TellMe was because of the company's already-stellar voice and directory services.  Now they've rolled out three new search services all aimed a mobile users.  One product allows you to speak search requests into a phone (like Google's experimental Goog411), another lets you send text message queries to have results texted back to you, and the third lets you speak search queries and receive visual results (like maps) on your mobile device.

  Introducing preferred cost bidding  [Inside AdWords]

Google has introduced a new way to bid within the AdWords framework.  Say you want to pay about 0.50 for a certain keyword.  Instead of manually monitoring and adjusting your account to hit that goal, you can now tell Google that you want to pay around 0.50 and AdWords will automatically adjust your bids to hit around that target.  The new feature is said to be available to all AdWords users within the next couple of days.  We'll have to monitor how this works out and what people's reaction is once it's available to the masses.

You probably noticed the light post day.  Other engagements kept me occupied for a vast majority of the day.  So I apologize for the lack of postage.  Have a great night… and we'll see you tomorrow!