Yahoo! Finance Limits number of hyperlinks within press releases

Email from PRNewswire today gives a heads up on new rules about ticker symbols, hyperlinks, and marketing links from Yahoo! Finance. SEO and PR savvy folks have been using the 1-to-100 rule of thumb for some time (to make sure press releases don’t look spammy to Google Analytics – which might knock down rankings.)

Here’s the official word from PRNewswire:

Yahoo! Finance recently sent a communication to its news providers which reaffirmed its newsfeed guidelines and also introduced new guidelines that will take effect on February 1. As a result, we are writing this letter to provide some more information about these guidelines, which should be considered when planning and writing your content. Please bear in mind, however, that Yahoo! Finance is only one of 5,800 Web sites that receive the PR Newswire newsfeed.

The Yahoo! Finance content guidelines focus on three areas:
• Stock market ticker symbols
• Hyperlinks in news releases
• Links to “marketing pages” for subscription services and the like

Ticker Symbols
Yahoo! has reminded its news providers that they do not allow ticker spamming, whereby ticker symbols are mentioned in a release for companies that are not the subject of the release. As an example, in a release announcing that Company X has entered into a marketing arrangement with Company Y, the ticker symbols for both companies would be allowed in the release. However, if the release went on to say that Company X has also had similar agreements with Companies A, B, C and D – and the ticker symbols for these companies were noted, this would be an example of ticker spamming according to Yahoo’s guidelines, and, therefore, this would not be permitted.



Hyperlinks
Yahoo! Finance will be limiting the number of links within a release to one hyperlink per every 100 words, with a maximum of six links within any one news release, regardless of length. Beyond this limit, Yahoo! will also allow inclusion of up to three Web site home page links at the bottom of the release. This includes “anchor text” links (linked words with a hyperlink embedded behind the actual word.) For anchor text links, a maximum of three consecutive words will be allowed to be linked.



Links to Marketing Pages
Yahoo! Finance will limit the links that go directly from a news release to a “marketing page” – those pages that encourage readers to sign up for subscriptions or to buy reports, white papers and the like, or that link to a “sub story” which requires the viewer to sign up in order to continue reading.

Please note that the aforementioned guidelines apply to all of Yahoo! Finance’s news and content providers, including all news release services.

It is important to remember that Yahoo! Finance is only one site out of thousands to which PR Newswire content is sent. Other sites may or may not have similar rules and, thus, may be less restrictive in their guidelines.



Winners of the “GLEE Give a Note Campaign, powered by Encoding.com, granted $1 million for their public school music programs

Nice news – a million dollars has been awarded to some very worthwhile public school music programs in the US through the ‘Glee’ Give a Note campaign. Kudos to Creative Asylum, the agency that organized Fox, Ryan Murphy (the creator of Glee), and the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) to fund and promote the campaign.

73 schools nationwide were named winners — receiving grants ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 to help save their struggling music programs. The grand prize winners of $50,000 each are: Phil Campbell High School, Phil Campbell, AL;
P.S. 48 Joseph R Drake, Bronx, NY; and
Clark Montessori, Cincinnati, OH. Check out the winning videos at Glee Give a Note.

Schools submitted videos in September, which were posted online and resulted in 1.7 million web votes, 262,000 Facebook “likes” with 33,000,000 Facebook impressions. Public voting and a panel from NAfME selected the prizewinners. Encoding.com powered the entire video workflow, managing video upload, transcoding, and optimization, via its proprietary Encoding Intelligence™, for the thousands of videos, in multiple formats, uploaded by the schools.

What a very happy holiday for the prizewinners. We hope the Fox/GLEE team will make this an annual event!

Encoding.com Powers Video for GLEE “Give a Note” Campaign by Creative Asylum, Fox, GLEE and NAfME

Encoding.com Powers Video for GLEE “Give a Note” Campaign by Creative Asylum, Fox, GLEE and NAfME

Over 1.7 million votes for $1,000,000 support to at-risk music programs in the US

San Francisco, CA – December 7, 2011 – Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service, today announced it has teamed with Creative Asylum, an integrated creative agency, located in Hollywood, CA, to power the GLEE “Give a Note” campaign to recognize at-risk music programs in the US and provide $1 million in donations to support music education. Encoding.com powered the entire video workflow, managing video upload, transcoding, and optimization, via its proprietary Encoding Intelligence™, for the thousands of videos, in multiple formats, uploaded by the schools.

Creative Asylum’s Emmy® Award-winning team feels passionate about making an impact on music education in America. They developed the concept for the GLEE “Give a Note” campaign and organized three champions of music – Fox, Ryan Murphy (the creator of GLEE), and the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) to join together through the “Give a Note” campaign to fight for struggling programs all across the country. GLEE star Jane Lynch promoted the campaign in a public service announcement video, watch it here: http://vid.ly/1a9r1u. The campaign will support music education by awarding $1 million dollars in prize money to music programs in jeopardy throughout the United States. The voting is complete — 1.7 million web votes, 262,000 Facebook “likes” with an expected 33,000,000 Facebook impressions — and the prizes will be awarded on December 15, 2011.

In addition to developing the concept, organizing the foundation, and securing funding and support from Fox and Glee, Creative Asylum built the GLEE “Give a Note” web platform where kids submitted videos showing why their school deserves a piece of the prize. The two-minute videos were uploaded to the site in various video formats, including AVI, MOV, MPEG, and WMV. The Encoding.com cloud-based transcoding service powered the video conversion process from “submit” through display, both on the website, in HTML5 video and Flash, and in popular mobile formats. The seamless, behind-the-scenes, video transcoding helped drive the momentum of this popular contest.

“We have had tremendous response for the GLEE ‘Give a Note’ campaign from both donors and schools seeking support to continue or build their music programs,” said Corey Gibson, Director, Marketing of Creative Asylum. “By working with Encoding.com we were able to focus on all the details around the promotion of the campaign, knowing that the technical details of video uploads, transcoding, and downloads for the thousands of submissions would simply work. This has been an important contribution to the success of the campaign.”

“Encoding.com is very happy to support this important effort by Creative Asylum and its ‘Give a Note’ partners,” said Jeff Malkin, president of Encoding.com. “We share their passion about music in public education and are happy to support the program by ensuring the seamless video process.”

About Encoding.com
Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service and provider of Vid.ly, the universal video platform, powers over 3,000 companies, including leading brands across media and entertainment, eLearning, retail, telecommunications, lifestyle, and advertising. Blending a flexible SaaS model, using cloud-computing platforms, Encoding.com enables publishers and developers to instantly scale, while eliminating expensive video infrastructure investments. Encoding.com supports all popular web and mobile formats, utilizing its proprietary Encoding Intelligence™ to accelerate processing, reduce errors and optimize video for any device. Gartner recognized Encoding.com as a “Cool Vendor 2011.” For ongoing Company updates, please see http://blog.encoding.com or follow @encodingdotcom on Twitter.

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Editorial Contact:

Frances Mann-Craik
Addison Marketing
frances@addisonmarketing.com
+1 408-868-9577

4 steps to Social Marketing – “Give them something to talk about”

People and search engines like fresh, new content. To effectively engage your audience and promote sharing through social media, you need to give them something to talk about!

Make the most of your marketing content:

1) Leverage your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy for your Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaigns. Target the right keywords and search phrases for your business and use them in both on-page and off-page content (meta tags for page titles, page descriptions, URL, H1 text).

2) Blog on your website and on other relevant websites. Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic.

3) Include a “call to action” in every post – to help push prospects down the funnel from leads to sales (sign up for a white paper, add your name to our email list, etc.)

4) Make it easy to share your content – include widgets to tweet, Like (Facebook), Google +1, and share on LinkedIn.

Need help? Check out Addison Marketing’s Free Marketing Tools or contact us: info AT addisonmarketing.com Addison Marketing to help grow your tech startup!

Addison Marketing Sponsors Women’s Wrestling Olympic Aspirants – Sara and Katherine Fulp-Allen

Joining the fray in traditionally male fields is a common theme for women graduates of Menlo College School of Business. Dynamic duo sisters, Sara and Katherine Fulp-Allen, are pursuing the “extreme version” of making it in a man’s world, with aspirations of joining the U.S. Women’s Wrestling team, at the London Olympics, in 2012.

Currently residents at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, both women are training hard to achieve their dream of becoming Olympic Champions. They must also overcome the financial challenges, since the U.S. Government does not provide monetary support for our Olympic Athletes. As full-time athletes and students completing graduate work, training heavily to achieve their goals does not allow Sara and Katherine time for full-time jobs.

Top performers in the academic arena as well, in 2007, Sara graduated Magna Cum Laude from Menlo College with a B.S. in Business Management, with an emphasis in International Management. And high-achieving, younger sister, Katherine, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Menlo College in 2010, earning a B.S. in Business Management, with an emphasis in Finance.

Addison Marketing is delighted to sponsor these fellow Menlo College Alumni and invites other Menlo alums–especially fellow women–to do the same.

For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit Fulp Allen Wrestling. http://www.fulpallenwrestling.com/Sponsor_Us.php

Encoding.com Powers Video for RockCityClub.com – The World’s 1st Social Music Network

Addison Marketing client, Encoding.com provides the power behind the hot new RockCityClub.com.

Encoding.com Powers Video for RockCityClub.com – The World’s 1st Social Music Network

San Francisco, CA – October 26, 2011 – Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service, announced it is teaming with Rockcityclub.com – The World’s Only Social Music Network created by Jack Wishna, Ofek Hayon, Brian Silver, John Kohl, and Stacy Haitsuka – past founder of NetZero, to provide encoding for the video submissions of millions of Rockcityclub.com’s artists around the world and for Rockcityclub.com live performances. Encoding.com’s cloud transcoding service provides infinite scalability for high-volume encoding, coupled with industry leading, guaranteed service level agreements that ensure timely video delivery. Working with Encoding.com provides Rockcityclub.com with leading-edge video transcoding software, while eliminating the need to make heavy investments in expensive encoding software/hardware solutions and the overhead required for managing high-volume video conversion needs.

Rockcityclub.com is the creator of The 1st Social Music Network, a system that integrates social media and fan interaction to develop undiscovered musical talent, and expose them and their music to a worldwide audience, utilizing both virtual and real-world experiences. Created by ROCKRENA INC., a global entertainment company, Rockcityclub.com operates online, and through brick and mortar facilities in key markets, and provides a range of services to help groups be discovered by the industry and fans around the world.

“Rockcityclub.com is changing the music industry in terms of how artists and bands are discovered and how their music is promoted and distributed,” said Jack Wishna, CEO, of ROCKRENA. “With Encoding.com managing video conversions, we are assured of high-quality video of Rockcityclub.com live performances and artist downloads to Rockcityclub.com being available quickly and reliably for our audiences around the world. Encoding.com streamlines the video conversion process at a fraction of the in-house expense.”

“We’re excited about working with the ROCKRENA team to help them achieve their vision of bringing the excitement of smaller music venue events into the home,” said Jeff Malkin, President of Encoding.com. “ROCKRENA has many artists and activities to manage, so outsourcing the technical complexities of video transcoding enables them to focus on the live production.”

About Encoding.com
Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service and provider of Vid.ly, the universal video platform, powers over 3,000 companies, including leading brands across media and entertainment, eLearning, retail, telecommunications, lifestyle, and advertising.  Blending a flexible SaaS model, using cloud-computing platforms, Encoding.com enables publishers and developers to instantly scale, while eliminating expensive video infrastructure investments.  Encoding.com supports all popular web and mobile formats, utilizing its proprietary Encoding Intelligence™ to accelerate processing, reduce errors, and optimize video for any device. Gartner recognized Encoding.com as a “Cool Vendor 2011.”  For ongoing Company updates, please see http://blog.encoding.com or follow @encodingdotcom on Twitter.

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Editorial Contacts:

Encoding.com Contact:
Frances Mann-Craik
Addison Marketing
frances@addisonmarketing.com
+1 408-868-9577

ROCKRENA Inc. Contact:
Emily Klimas
Public Relations and Communications Manager
702-529-0158
eklimas@rockrena.com

PR works!!! Addison Marketing Client Encoding.com named to Top 100 Companies in Online Video; Nominated for five Readers’ Choice Awards; Reaches 15 Million Encodes

Addison Marketing Client, Jeff Malkin, President of Encoding.com, said last week: “We love free publicity. PR has been a very effective lead gen tool for us and has established us a leading brand in the online video space.”

Here’s some proof of this success:

A Buyers’ Guide to Encoding and Transcoding Products – October 2011
Whether you need a hardware, software, or hybrid solution for encoding and transcoding, this guide has you covered.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/A-Buyers-Guide-to-Encoding-and-Transcoding-Products-78128.aspx

Cloud & Hybrid Solutions

Encoding.com
www.encoding.com

Encoding.com is probably the best known cloud-based encoding service. Files can be easily uploaded from a simple browse tool or can be added via a desktop application that includes encoding presets and drag-and-drop upload. The company supports huge numbers of file types for ingest and delivery. The user can control nearly every aspect of the encoding process from bitrate to video dimensions and output to multiple formats from H.264 through MPEG-2. Mobile output is easily configured for iOS devices as well as some Android and BlackBerry devices. Adaptive bitrate encoding is supported for iPad/iPhone at as many bitrates as the customer chooses. After transcoding, the user can have the files delivered to any of the major CDNs, or the files can be delivered via FTP to wherever the user desires. It is interesting to note that the company is the only video encoding service integrated with Rackspace and Amazon Web Services. Encoding.com pricing is monthly or pay as you go, or it can be customized for large-volume transcoding needs.

No mention of this company would be complete without including the Vid.ly universal video platform. The idea behind the service is that customers just want their videos to play anywhere on every platform. It is a simple process of telling Encoding.com where your video is, and it will do the transcoding and deliver a unique Vid.ly URL. Vid.ly will transcode your video into 22 formats and will provide you with HTML5- compliant embed codes. With the reasonably priced Vid.ly Pro, the user has access to analytics, API access, and a choice of a growing number of CDNs.

AND:

Encoding.com Named to Top 100 Companies that Matter in Online Video

Nominated for five Readers’ Choice Awards; 15 Million Encodes

San Francisco, CA – October 19, 2011 – Encoding.com, the world’s largest video transcoding service and provider of Vid.ly, the universal video URL platform, was named as one of the one hundred companies that “matter the most in online video” by Streaming Media magazine. In addition, Encoding.com has been nominated in five categories for Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards, and the Company recently announced surpassing 15 million video encodes and is pacing at over 1 million video encodes per month.

The Streaming Media 100, issued for the first time this year, is a list of the 100 companies doing the most important and innovative work in online video today. “When we set out to select the inaugural Streaming Media 100, our goal was simple: create a list of the most important companies in online video,” said Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen of Streaming Media. Encoding.com, founded in 2008, is, along with one other company, the youngest company named to the list. The Top 100 list honors industry leaders, including: Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and YouTube; and emerging leaders, including Encoding.com.

Encoding.com and Vid.ly, its recently released universal video URL platform, have also been nominated for five 2011 Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards. These annual awards give Streaming Media Readers the chance to honor their favorite products and services.

Encoding.com nominations:

- Best Online Video Technology Company

- Cloud Encoding/Transcoding Service

- Encoding Software (Under $1000)

Vid.ly nominations:

- Best Streaming Innovation 2011

- Mobile Video Platform

Voting has started and will remain open until October 21. Winners will be revealed at this year’s Streaming Media West conference, in Los Angeles, on November 8.

“We are honored to be named to the top 100 list of online video companies by Streaming Media magazine and to be nominated in five categories for Readers’ Choice Awards,” said Jeff Malkin, President of Encoding.com. “It has been a banner year for Encoding.com. We are proud that thousands of customers rely on our Encoding.com and Vid.ly services as an integral part of their online and mobile video solutions.”

About Encoding.com

Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service and provider of Vid.ly, the universal video platform, powers over 3,000 companies, including leading brands across media and entertainment, eLearning, retail, telecommunications, lifestyle, and advertising. Blending a flexible SaaS model, using cloud-computing platforms, Encoding.com enables publishers and developers to instantly scale, while eliminating expensive video infrastructure investments. Encoding.com supports all popular web and mobile formats, utilizing its proprietary Encoding Intelligence™ to accelerate processing, reduce errors, and optimize video for any device. Gartner recognized Encoding.com as a “Cool Vendor 2011.” For ongoing Company updates, please see http://blog.encoding.com or follow @encodingdotcom on Twitter.

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Chip Design Mag’s Jim Kobylecky’s tribute to Steve Jobs – worth a read

Chip Design Magazine’s Jim Koblecky has penned a fine blog post as a tribute to Steve Jobs –

End of an Age of Discovery–Steve Jobs dies at 56.

Five hundred years from now when someone, or some thing, sums up our civilization, the teacher may simply gloss over ordinary heroes, and step directly from Columbus to his logical successor, Steve Jobs. They are both personalities that made our future inevitable—we just don’t yet know what Steve’s future will become. Columbus was a megalomaniac, mystic and genius. Steve Jobs was, well, Steve Jobs. Columbus was known for sailing by “dead reckoning,” by reading sea, sky, and birds rather than relying on stars, compasses and maps. He tried for big things and sometimes succeeded. Opening up the New World was just one of his more successful failures.

Here’s the link to the rest of the blog: http://www.chipdesignmag.com/kobylecky/2011/10/06/end-of-an-age-of-discovery/

PR… has established us as a leading brand…

I’m pleased to share some results, from this past week, of marketing efforts made on behalf of Encoding.com, an Addison Marketing client.

Encoding.com has been selected as one of the “Top 100 Companies that matter most in online video.” Founded in 2008, they are one of the two youngest companies on the list and join industry giants like Apple, Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, and YouTube. In addition, Encoding.com has been nominated in five categories for the Streaming Media Magazine Readers’ Choice awards. And they were named a “Cool Vendor 2011″ by Gartner earlier this year.

Addison Marketing works directly with Jeff Malkin, president of Encodng.com. Their primary marketing effort to date has been PR. Jeff copied us on an email to his team and gave us permission to share his note:

“We love free publicity. PR has been a very effective lead gen tool for us and has established us a leading brand in the online video space.” Jeff Malkin, President, Encoding.com

Please Vote: Encoding.com and Vid.ly – Nominated in 5 categories for Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards

Encoding.com, the company that enables videos to work on all devices and browsers, has been nominated for Streaming Media Readers’ Choice awards in five categories!

Encoding.com, the cloud-based transcoding service, has been nominated in three awards:

- Best Online Video Technology Company
- Cloud Encoding/Transcoding Service
- Encoding Software (Under $1000)

Vid.ly, the turnkey universal video URL platform for mobile and HTML5 video, has been nominated in two categories:

- Best Streaming Innovation 2011
- Mobile Video Platform

Use this link to vote: http://www.streamingmedia.com/ReadersChoice/2011/Vote.aspx

Voting is open until October 21, 2011. Please vote for this awesome Addison Marketing client!