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The 12 Most Useful Social Bookmarking & Autoposting Tools for Your Blog
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
As bloggers, we’re always trying to encourage our readers to post our blogs to one of the many social bookmarking services… be it digg, delicious, mixx, reddit, stumbleupon or one of the myriad others. There are many different wordpress plugins for different social sites. The problem is that your blog ends up cluttered with all of those buttons, and it really gets annoying.
The solution has been the plugins that allow you to post to any or many of the social networks. Here’s an overview of all of the ones that I’ve found (with some of my lovely comments to boot). One of the most popular players - sharethis, has received $15 million dollars in funding!
Online Video for Small Businesses - Can I afford it?
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
It all started with Youtube and Viral marketing. It spread to personal multimedia on websites. It continued with Rovion… For $3,000 you could have a professional nudge on your site bugging all your repeat visitors (but it looks cool). Microsoft’s bought it, and servicemagic has as well. The problem is that it’s really expensive. But, we’re nice people, and we want small business owners to benefit as well.
Want to put video on your site? Here’s a couple of resources:
USA Today’s Steve Strauss Encourages Small Business Owners to have Blogs
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008John Janstch alerted me to an article in the USA Today online that adresses whether business owners should have blogs.
Steve Strauss gives 5 reasons a small business owner should have a blog:
- You help build a sense of community - in other words, you build a relationship with the customer, so they see you as a real person… not just a webpage
- They allow you to plug products
- They help with SEO - I use the blog here solely for SEO (as well as to get new clients - I’ll get to the plug at the end
)
Free Website Design Book from Newfangled.com CEO, Eric Holter
Monday, February 4th, 2008In doing some research for our companies website, I stumbled across an interesting site - www.newfangled.com. They created their own system for designing websites, which looks really intriguing.
As I have gone from merely doing marketing of websites to managing the design of websites,I’ve learnt how many different options there are, and how tough it is to convey something that is still an idea in your head. Eric Holter’s claim is that using the standardized way of designing a website- using wireframes and sitemaps, doesn’t effectively communicate what needs to get completed.
Blogging for Yourself, the User and the Search Engine - a 2008 resolution
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008As you may or may not know, I am a big believer in blogging. It is a valuable way of
1)expressing your personality,
2)creating a connection with your users, and
3)getting valuable SE ranking.
The question is which one comes first? You might think this is a trivial question. It’s not.When I started blogging on About Results Marketing, I had merely bought a cool expiring domain for something I had wanted to do in the future - consulting in SEO, SEM and online marketing.
Radio and TV Cost Per Action Company Gets $20 Mil. in Funding
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007Although I focus primarily on online marketing - I work with TV and Radio Advertising (among other offline marketing channels) as well. (I’m into any media that I can track performance in.)
The news today is about Revshare.com receiving funding to the tune of $20 million dollars. The guys over at AlarmClock say” We had no clue there was such as thing as cost per action in the TV advertising world”, and now only think that there is Revshare.
Should an Ecommerce Website Have a Blog?
Thursday, December 6th, 2007(Disclaimer: I am extremely biased towards blogs. I have already come to the conclusion that blogs are always beneficial. Consider yourself warned!)
Here are the issues:
- What are the pro’s and con’s of having a blog on your ecommerce site (The Theory)
- What are the other experts in the field saying about having blogs on your ecommerce site
- What are the big guys doing?
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What are the Pro’s and Con’s of having a Blog on your Ecommerce site?
Los Angeles Internet Marketing - A Local Business Directory
Sunday, November 25th, 2007As you probably know, getting links to your website is the all important thing in getting better rankings (if you have an optimized website first, that is).
Many people use article directories, press releases, putting blog links on other blogs etc.
As a small business owner, there is a very valuable and often overlooked factor - getting your business listed in the local business directoriesI am in the midst of creating a list of sites to submit your business to, for local marketing. I’ve already mentioned a great resource in the Local Search Optimization post.
Is the LA Times Getting Closer to “Getting It”?
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007This is a follow up to my first post on the LA Times’s efforts to go “Web 2.0″, after meeting with Eric Ulken at a blogger’s event.
First off, a little disclaimer… My site is ugly, doesn’t convert, and definitely is not “cool”. So I really should have no right to criticize other companies’ efforts to “get it”. Especially since the LA Time site isn’t to badly designed. It has a pretty minimalist design, and very easy to find links.
The Importance of Local Optimization for Small Businesses
Sunday, November 18th, 2007I’m currently doing some consulting work for some clients - as well as for my day job… creating and implementing a plan of action for local search. I’m realizing how much I’ve underutilized it. In the next couple of days I will be creating a guide outlining the steps you need to take to market your business locally.
In the meantime, here is an important resource from Frank Fuchs, a “Yahoo” who seems to have no qualms about stating his impressions of the company publicly. He lists all of the Local Places to submit your business to.
Market Your Business Through Referrals, John Jantsch
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 “I
get at least a hundred times the referrals now as I did before I had a
referral
plan.”
~ Scott Hensley - Affordable Concrete Cutting
Today
I want to share with you, in it’s entirety, a copy of a letter I
received from a small business owner who implemented a number of
suggestions I gave him in the Duct Tape Marketing book.
I chose to share this not to point out how brilliant I am - writing this stuff is the easy part sometimes
- but to showcase how acting on what you read - the really hard part - can payhuge dividends.
LA Times Getting Social Media? Candid Discussion with Eric Ulken
Monday, November 5th, 2007Today I happened on the Mashable “Top 10 Blogger Events Post“. I noticed that BarCamp is having an event in LA today. Oops, good timing! I figured, what the heck, I’ll check it out.
I came down, and found an interesting setup. The goal is to have a conversation with the crowd instead of having presenter’s merely talk to the crowd. In other words, the focus of the sessions were wherever the participants took it.
The session that I found really valuable was the one from Eric Ulken from latimes.com. He was hosting a presentation on mashups - how layering data together can create a valuable experience for users. Eric identified three parts of a mashup:
Could Consumers Really Accept Behavioral Targeting?
Friday, November 2nd, 2007I am a regular reader of Mediapost’s many daily newsletters. It really allows me to cover the industry on a day-to-day basis, as well as get the thoughts of some of the foremost decision makers in our industry. (I highly suggest that you sign up.)
Anyway, so today, we have a post from Dave Morgan, the founder of Tacoda. His claim was that despite their “highly publicized” opt out campaign, not many people took advantage.
Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product…Part 2 - Pay-Per-Call?? The Click Fraud Solution???
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007I was going to do a post on Yahoo’ s smartads press releases, as well as the Atlas’s Research that conveniently came up right beforehand. Hmm… both services not in as much in the SEM field as much as in the…. you got it - banner and rich media advertising… Hmmm correlation?
(Unfortunately, that idea seems to have fallen flat. The sad part is, that although the concept was a good one - someone in PR at Yahoo just doesn’t know how to promote it. It will remain a little gold mine for the marketer that cares.)
Real Good Keyword Research Tools…
Friday, October 12th, 2007I’m frustrated - and I need your suggestion. I am doing keyword research on a huge industry for a site that we are putting up shortly. I’m a systematic person. When I was working for one of the best affiliate marketers creating keyword lists, I would systematically create an excel sheet that contained all of the variations of that keyword that people would search.
In House Agency vs. Outside Agency…
Friday, August 31st, 2007We are currently doing PPC inhouse. Our SEO however, is out of house. Here is something that I’ve been mulling over. What is more valuable - doing as much of the advertising and marketing in-house, or to hire an agency?
Advantages of doing in-house:
1) Accountability - Anything get’s screwed up you bring in your employees in and just give it to them over the head!
2) Increased ROI- Agencies fees are generally pretty expensive. They charge you through the nose. You know you are spending alot more. Contrast that with hiring an employee, many times it’s much cheaper to hire an employee.