I never tire of seeing this so I thought you all might like this pic also.
Remote Access Software - Prepare for the Unexpected
June 1st, 2009 1 Comment »I’m not an alarmist and I certainly don’t concern myself with things such as swine flu, bird flu, etc. but I can tell you that the reality of it is there are things out there that may prevent you or your employees from coming to work.
Here is an article showing the value of using Remote Access Software as a proactive step in the event there was some disaster that prevented you from reaching the office. With Remote Access Software, you can still work from wherever you are.
>> Prepare For The Unexpected By Deploying Remote Access Software
Let me know if you use remote access software - I’m curious how many people have taken this step to assure they can always access their data.
Twitter Applies Follow Limit
April 21st, 2009 Leave your comment »
Did you know that Twitter has a limit to the number of people that you can Follow each day? As crazy as it may seem, the limit is 1,000 follows per day - who has the time to follow 1,000 different tweeters each day, let alone find those tweeters?
Apparently, this rule has been around for quite a while but Twitter has never enforced it (I’ll bet they were waiting to find out who got 1 million followers first, Ashton or CNN). Well, that’s all changing - Twitter will now enable this policy across the board, which means you’re out of luck if you’re one of those people with nothing more to do than sit around Twitter all day.
Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is a great app and I use it everyday but I don’t spend my life in front of it and neither should you - it’s just not healthy!
If by chance, you’re a large corporation, very popular website, movie star, Susan Doyle or someone other than your “average Joe/Josephine” then you can request an exception from @twitter…
If you are one of those ‘amazing’ people that can follow a thousand or more tweeters a day, let us know. Give us some feedback on how you do it, why you do it and how will this limitation affect your life/business.
Getting Paid To Tweet - Is It Worth Your Time?
April 17th, 2009 Leave your comment »A new company, TwitPub, wants to encourage you to shutdown the public view of your Twitter account and get paid for your tweets. Sound Good? Of course it sounds good! How many people wouldn’t want to get paid for something they already do?
Making money is great, especially when you don’t have to change your habits, but honestly, do you think you can produce enough unique, life-changing content that will revolutionize someones thought process? Do you think there’s enough people out there who feel they can’t find anything better without paying for it? Not likely… I know there’s a lot of great tweets but honestly, I can’t imagine paying to read any of them - there are too many “other” sources for the information I need.
While I don’t see value nor a market for this site, I do salute them for their innovation and I wish them well. It’d be great to see this business model take off, I know they’ve put a lot of time, energy and hard work into launching this new advertising platform.
Just in case anyone out there thinks they can benefit from TwitPub, jump on over, check out their site and give them a call. It never hurts to try - who knows, we may all be surprised. This may be the next big online ad model.
Stumpedia - Social Meets Search
April 15th, 2009 2 Comments »Everyday new search engines rise through the ranks just enough to get a mention on a blog or two; and most of them turn out to offer nothing except regurgitated or outdated results scraped from some other useless engine, but sometimes they offer something unique.
Stumpedia, a new human powered search engine, came on the scene in early 2008 but didn’t make a big splash, in fact, they got by me which is rare - I’m always looking to get behind someone that can give Google a run for their money. Thanks to our ever-evolving love of social networking, people of the web may be ready to accept a new engine with some pretty groovy capabilities.
According to a press release from Stumpedia,
“Stumpedia.com will enable users around the world to share their knowledge and interests with one another and provide an alternative to traditional search. Users are encouraged to create custom content pages for any possible search term in the world and links that will help people find relevant results and answers to their search requests. Links to social bookmarks, social profiles, blogs, news stories, authoritative articles, videos, images, and web pages are welcomed.”
The simple fact that Stumpedia is just now being recognized may be a blessing in disguise. Last year, social networking was big, but not this big. These last few months, people have fallen in love with Twitter like never before, StumbleUpon has been brought back to its original family of developers and Facebook is getting a new facelift. This wouldn’t be possible without people-power.
If, like me, you’re ready for search to breakout of the ordinary and into the extraordinary, I encourage you to drop in at Stumpedia, give their engine a whirl, setup an account and post a link to your site or blog - play around with it a bit. Then tell all of your friends because honestly, we need something different - it has been too many years with Google and Yahoo. We need a change and what a better way than incorporate search engine technology with social networking.
Google Product Search Makes a Come Back
January 9th, 2009 Leave your comment »Google Product Search, formally known as Google Base, is still run by the same product distribution technology known as Google Base but is know rebranded and incorporated into the Google Search Results as “Shopping Results”.
* see example: do a search for ipod covers in Google – you should see a “Shopping Results for ipod covers” section on the first page. These results come from Google Product Search.
So, What’s the big deal about Google Product Search?
During the month of November 2008, Google reported 11.8 million unique visitors had used Google Product Search. Those numbers are up 786% from the same period in 2007 – that is an amazing increase in web users.
Why the jump in visitors? Because Google finally started using their own technology. Google Product Search has been around for a long time but was always a flop for customers until Google included it in their standard keyword results at Google.com. This inclusion is all part of the new and revised Universal Search technology that drives Google.
So, What Does This Mean For Your Website?
Well, if you sell any type or amount of products, you can add them to Google Product Search for free. That’s right, this is a free tool and there are two easy ways to upload your products – the first being a single upload of one product at a time. Or, you can create and upload a data feed, which will let you put hundreds or thousands of products online quickly.
This is not the end-all, be-all solution to selling more products online but it certainly will give you a better chance attracting customers.
Check Out: Google Product Search
If you need some assistance with this program, give me a call or drop me an email and I can give you more details and help you get setup with this program.
Online Marketing Budgets Increase by 47%
December 13th, 2008 1 Comment »A joint survey performed by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group Communications (GGC), revealed that nearly half, 47% to be precise, of all marketing budgets are being directed to online marketing programs as opposed to traditional forms such as trade shows, print and the like.
According to Goldstein Group Communications President Joel Goldstein, “The sense of urgency to move to online marketing has been felt by leading marketing organizations for some time now, but the extent to which budgets have been re-defined is dramatic.”
There are several schools of thought as to why this trend is increasing but the most obvious is cost and lead quality. I believe the rising cost of traditional marketing coupled with the inability to focus campaigns to the extent possible with online marketing, the lack of ability to provide measurable results, and the downturn in consumer spending has heavily encouraged companies to embrace the internet as a viable marketing alternative.
Traditional advertising in places like the Yellow Pages or trade magazines can run as much as $2,000 per month per ad. Trade shows can be even more expensive when you consider the cost of travel, lodging and meals for each sales rep, the cost of booth space and of course the large expense put into trade show graphics, display stands and printed marketing material.
Several recent polls have suggested the average online marketing program will run a company between $1,500 to $5,000 per month, depending on the size and scope of the program. While that seems to be inline with some traditional marketing costs, you have to remember that your online programs target a wider array of customers through multiple web mediums.
When you combine the lower cost per acquisition with a higher quality of lead, you have a winning combination. Traditional marketing has very limited abilities that don’t often allow businesses to target customers based on geographical regions, age, gender, interests or buying habits, but online marketing programs are developed specifically to target customers based on these criteria.
According to a recent article by Mike Sachoff, a staff writer at WebProNews, marketers are reporting that their websites generate the best source of leads, roughly 24%. Search engines follow closely behind at 19%.
So, what does all this mean for you? Well, first off, it means you’re on the right track!
As your marketing progresses so will the success you experience, but you need to know that as the web continues to develop there will be positive trends that will produce more business than you can imagine, at the same time there will be negative trends that will test your patience and at times make you feel it’s time to through in the towel.
What I can tell you is that there’s no magic to good marketing – the success of your campaign depends on the amount of time you are willing to invest, the quality and overall availability of your products and the type of campaigns your marketing firm sets up for you.
Let me be the first to tell you – the more online tactics you can use, the more success you will see in the future. But, the longer you are willing to stick with these programs, the more stable your results will be, the higher your search engine positions and the more success you will experience as a whole.
Effective Blog Commenting
April 21st, 2009 Leave your comment »Below is a post I wrote last year through another blog that I have - with all of the comment spam that I’ve had recently, it seems this may be more relevant now than it was way-back-when. Please read - it’ll help you be more effective in your blog campaigns.
Blogging has fast become the best way to build link popularity for your website but if you’re not careful, you may get yourself listed as a “comment spammer”.
Writing blogs and commenting on blogs owned by other people has opened up an entirely new way of attracting customers to your site. With a little creative writing, some quality information and a little research, you can generate not only good link popularity, which helps boost your keyword ranking but you can also build a large customer base of direct (and very targeted) traffic.
While people still rely heavily on search engines for the majority of their day-to-day searching, they’re also finding a wealth of information floating around in blogs. Not only are they able to find websites, products, services, etc. that may not have made it into the first page or two of the search engines but they can also read reviews, interact with the manufacturer/distributor and post comments for future users.
With a little persistence, you too can benefit from blogging and target an entirely new group of people who prefer to research before they buy. The best way is to spend a few minutes every day reading through blog articles related to your industry and when you find one that has a positive message, post a comment about that article with a link back to your website.
Say for instance your website sells chemicals for killing weeds and grass and in your daily blog searches, you come across a blog article talking about the best weed whacker that a person can buy to keep those pesky weeds at bay. You could post a paragraph or two about an alternative to getting rid of weeds and include a link to the product page or home page. If the comment seems genuine and sincere, there’s a great chance your comment will be posted.
Below is two examples of blog comments based on a blog review of the best weed whackers:
The Bad Version:
Great information - check out my site at: www.abcchemicals.com
The Good Version:
I found your article very informative and really appreciate the time you took to assemble this review. For years I struggled with weeds in my rock gardens and other landscaped areas - most of the time I spent on my hands and knees pulling the weeds, which just came back a few weeks later. I tried various weed whackers and while they saved my back, they didn’t prevent the weeds from coming back. I finally found a great product that’s environmentally friendly and a back saver - it’s called “No More Weeds”. I tested this in a small area of my garden and found that after just a few days, the weeds were nowhere to be found. Unlike some of the popular weed killers, this one’s environmentally friendly and doesn’t harm pets. Anyone looking for a quick, easy solution should check out this site: www.abcchemicals.com.
Thanks,
Weed Free In Montana
The above example I just gave only took me about 2 minutes to write and because it seems to be genuine, I have a better than 80% chance it will be picked up and used but the bad example I showed is sure to get you listed as a spammer. What you will gain from this is instant traffic from anyone reading this blog post as well as the much coveted link popularity that will drive your keyword positions to the top in Google and other search engines.
We actually do this a lot for our clients since this technique has proven more successful than any program we’ve used in the past. And, the great thing is you don’t have to be a marketing expert to implement this program. If you have a few minutes a day, you can post a couple of these comments and who knows, any of these comments that are picked up could be your ticket to a lot of future sales.
I recently spoke with a company that has taken to blog commenting and a single post they made a couple of months back, has sent over 2,300 visitors to their website. They estimate that out of those 2,300 visitors, 40% have purchased from them. Not a bad haul for a few minutes worth of typing.
TO ALL OF YOU WHO THINK A QUICK, ONE LINE, MEANINGLESS COMMENT WILL GIVE YOU VALUE - STOP IT!!! IT’S A WASTE OF YOUR TIME AND YOUR CLIENTS MONEY…
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Posted in Blogging
Tags: blog commenting blog comments Blogging blogs commenting effective writing