Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg » Industry News http://www.techipedia.com tamar weinberg is a digital marketing specialist, social media consultant, and tech geek at heart Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:43:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 http://www.techipedia.com/2012/internet-marketing-posts-2011/ http://www.techipedia.com/2012/internet-marketing-posts-2011/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:19:57 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/?p=4204 [ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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It’s my birthday and I have some great news!

In January of 2011, I said that I’d make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only. And I did. Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content, the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends – the stuff you use for presentations and proposals, for arguing that social media and online marketing does have a firm place in today’s landscape. The newsletter, which was sent within the first week of the month, would include new research findings from surveys conducted by research groups such as the Pew Research Center, new discoveries from a marketing firm’s eye tracking study, or data that was recently culled across a multitude of SEO agency case study reports.

This year, I am pleased to bring back our Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 thanks to an excellent sponsor, HubSpot. HubSpot has recently launched a most amazing Marketing Grader tool to help you measure the effectiveness of your website. Please be sure to check it out as it’s one of the best tools I’ve ever seen, and I would be saying that even if they weren’t a sponsor!

And now, here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: the evergreen portion of my Internet Marketing best posts delivered straight to your doorstep on my birthday as you’ve come to expect year after year. Want the trends, news, and findings too? Sign up right now at a totally reduced cost for 2012 for a limited time.

SEO

  • Quick and Dirty Competitive Research for Keywords: If you’re looking for keywords to target in your SEO campaign, this guide will tell you what to do with available online tools and websites.
  • Internal Linking: The Benefits of Great Information Architecture for SEO: Sometimes you don’t have to beg other webmasters to link to you. Consider focusing your link building tactics internally — that is, on your site. Breadcrumbs, navigation, and related pages are a great way to start.
  • Does Google PageRank Really Matter?: The answer is no, but it’s still a metric that is close to Larry Page’s heart. Think instead about social media traffic, good content, a cleanly coded website, slow progressive growth, and your site’s authority.
  • SEO Checklist: 60 Essential Checks Before Launching a Website: Is your site ready to be launched? Ask these questions and then answer them.
  • The Meta Description Tag: Are you using the meta description tag effectively on your websites? Here are some applications of meta tags and arguments as to why you should be using them.
  • How to Do an SEO Audit: How well is your newest SEO client’s practices? Do an audit to find out. This audit will cover their keywords targeted, tools used, site architecture, backlinks, and other elements to make sure you have a full understanding of what the client needs to take action and do better.
  • 10 Metrics to Check When Your Traffic Crashes: With Google consistently trying to provide the best search experience, your rankings may fall at any time. This is how you can evaluate where it happened.
  • 12 Popular Keyword Organization Tips and Tools: This post contains a list of tools that help organize some unruly keyword lists and includes tools like Ad Group Filter, RKG Duck, Wordstream Keyword Grouper, Spyfu Keyword Groupie (obviously using a different “keyword group” name not to infringe on any copyrights or trademarks!), and a number of others.
  • A Guide to Geocoding Images for Local SEO: Image optimization is a big part of a cohesive SEO strategy. Wouldn’t you want your image to be associated with local places? This is the article you need to make that happen.
  • User Friendly SEO: These are the tactics that search engine optimizers should use to optimize for search engines and user experience.
  • 8 Necessary SEO Steps During a Website Redesign: Every so often, we have to redesign our site. But how do we make sure the search traffic we had stays intact? Auditing the site and working out which keywords and links are the top performers is a given.
  • The Heart of SEO: 8 Everlasting Truths: This is misleading; this is only part 1 so it has 4 truths. Part 2 hasn’t been posted as of the compilation of this report, but you should know that SEO is about a strong brand, that you must perform research, real value produces great results, and you must understand where to circulate the message to get the best results.
  • Technical SEO: Tools and Approach: Which technical factors matter for SEO? This is a review of what tools (e.g. wget, curl, Xenu, etc.) can help you assess how well your website is performing technically.
  • Duplicate Content in a Post Panda World: Duplicate content poses a problem for SEO because when two pages share the same content, one page may get indexed (the one you don’t necessarily want, perhaps) while the other gets hidden. This post is a somewhat technical approach toward dealing with duplicate content issues. It’s pretty exhaustive too. There’s even a 22 page PDF of the article in case you wanted to take it with you. :)
  • New Edition of the Ranking Factors for 2011 is Now Live!: SEOmoz recently came out with a survey that asked many practitioners their experience with keyword rankings. This data is compiled here. This is the newest data since 2009.
  • The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research: …and the tools you need to use to do a great job.
  • Small Business SEO: 46 Experts on the Biggest Mistakes SMBs Make with SEO (and How to Avoid Them): What have small businesses done wrong in the ways of SEO? DIYSEO asked 46 experts who weighed in on many things, from forgetting a local focus, doing too much at one time, having bad quality links, not optimizing their online listings, and much more.
  • How To Take Your Keyword Research to a Higher Level: This post explores what differentiates quality keyword research from the junk that you get from a tool. Yes, it will take time. Yes, you’ll be happy with the results.
  • Infographic: SEO Salary Guide: If you’re looking for general salaries for SEO, this infographic might tell you what you can expect to be paid on average by city. If you’re looking for a good salary, you may wish to relocate.
  • SEO Checklist for Local Small Business Websites: If you’re ever planning on starting a small business website, this is a decent but basic checklist of the considerations you need to make in order to make sure it’s well SEO’d. Have a look.
  • Should I Change My URLs for SEO?: This beginner SEO question comes up often. And since it’s being touched upon in this post, I figured it’s worth including here too.
  • Introducing:  The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors: All of this SEO in an easily digestible infographic.
  • Bing Rankings Cheat Sheet: People still use Bing, so understanding what works for rankings on that site is important. Here’s a list of what Bing seems to prefer for those top rankings.
  • SEO Best Practices for Restaurants and Eateries: I’m not sure how many of you readers actually have a restaurant or eatery (or know someone who does), but this was pretty solid advice.
  • The Complete Google Panda Reference Guide: Google’s Panda update has left site owners and SEOs confused and befuddled, but this guide summarizes the history and explains how you can be successful despite this algorithmic update.
  • The Responsibilities of SEO Have Been Upgraded: SEO is not the same today as it was 6 years ago. Today, we think about XML sitemaps, local integration, keyword usage in images, PR tactics, and so much more. Your strategies must employ content creation, community management, local/maps optimization, among others. How many of these new tactics have you adopted?
  • How User Generated Content is Changing SEO: This is an analysis of how search results changed in the last year alone and how it impacts your business. Get more reviews, people! That’s one of many ways to be more visible.
  • How Social Media Affects Content Relevance in Search: Why is social media so important? For those die hard SEO practitioners who don’t see the value in social, this article shows the last few months’ impact on search engine rankings. The more you share, the more likely the content will rank.

Blogging

Marketing Automation

  • A Guide to Marketing Automation: Inbound marketing tactics include marketing automation, a way to segment leads and scale personalized communications. This article introduces this element and explains how it helps a cohesive inbound marketing effort.
  • 4 Ways to Get More out of Marketing Automation: A lot of my general audience doesn’t understand marketing automation, but did you know that it’s responsible for more than $300 million in revenue? Here’s how to maximize it.
  • 4 Ways to Grow Your Business with Marketing Automation: Sometimes you don’t need to man everything in a marketing engagement. Automating your marketing efforts may be fruitful. Here’s what you can do to change your business course. Enjoy!
  • How to Fail at Marketing Automation: …and four characteristics that work.
  • 5 Disastrous Misconceptions About Marketing Automation: Marketing automation is not something you can do alone; you need to put it together with a strong inbound marketing plan. It’s about being active all the time, watching the progress of your campaigns as they go through their cycles. These facts are discussed in more depth in this article.

Link Building

  • 10 Years of Link Building Advice: Link building advice can be hit or miss, but some link builders have given us pretty good advice even as far back as 2001. These golden nuggets are shared and discussed.
  • Link Building 101: What’s link building? This is your introductory guide. (The next link goes even further.)
  • How to Build Links: The Ultimate Guide: This is one of several really helpful link building guides, covering topics in social media, viral content, guest posting, news, link requests, face to face networking, and much more.
  • A Guide to Long Tail Link Building: It’s always more advisable to target long tail keywords versus the broader ones (e.g. “travel,” or “jewelry”). This article explores how to get into this tactic and its benefits.
  • Creative Tips for Link Building on a Shoestring Budget: One of the best ways to get links is via writing guest posts. How many of you actually do that?
  • How to Train a Link Builder: It seems that there’s a lot of turnover in the link building space, so training new link builders will be a frequent occurrence.
  • Notorious S.E.O: The 10 Crack Commandments of Link Building: Link building as seen from the Notorious B.I.G. angle. This is a really creative piece.
  • 10 Ethical Ways to Buy Links: While some may argue that you need to nofollow links purchased via paid reviews (which is suggested here), link buying isn’t over and is a great way for many people to get the visibility they feel they deserve and the SEO value that may come from it.
  • 25 Reasons Why Another Site Will Link to Yours: How are you getting links to your site? Are you being resourceful? Offering discounts? Publishing videos? Helping people make money? This and 21 other reasons are why those links are coming.
  • Understanding Your Backlink Profile: Backlinks are important to find out the health of your site in search rankings. However, they could be manipulated. It’s important to analyze your backlinks regularly to see if there’s anything unhealthy going on.
  • Kicking off a Linkbuilding Campaign with Questions: If you’re link-building for yourself or for a client, these are questions you want to have answered for a good understanding of what you’re doing and where.
  • Link Building with the Experts – 2011 Edition: Every year, this interview series asking link builders about the trends in search engine optimization and how it impacts link builders.
  • Into the Minds of Link Builders: Three link builders are asked tough and fun questions on tactics and strategy.
  • Proven Ways to Use Content to Attract Links: This is part 3 in a series of posts that explain link building. To get good links, you don’t have to build brand new content. Repurpose! Add a new twist! Use forums. There are many ways to go with this.
  • Link Building for E-commerce Sites: Anchor text is important when it comes to link building – you want traffic but also conversions. Here’s a good framework for making that happen … and it isn’t necessarily only for e-commerce sites.
  • 10 Reasons Why Your Link Requests are Failing: If your requests are spammy, you don’t have clear messaging, the links aren’t converting to traffic, and you’re just building a link and stopping there and not focusing on a relationship, your requests will fail at generating the right response. It’s hard work. Are you prepared?
  • Link Building in 2011: This is an interview with 2 known link builders on the impact of SEO and links.
  • 99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away (and Improve Your Brand Too): Want to build links? Here are 99 ways, from giveaways to community building to media connections to offering discounts and so much more.

Local Online Marketing

Branding

Content Marketing/Development/Copywriting

  • 3 Ways to Get Great Content from Your Boring Business: Shannon Paul suggests three ways to make your boring business exciting to prospects: through problem solving, through creativity, and by being the media.
  • SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics (Content Development): This is definitely one of the best articles in this year’s report. This Distilled guide to creating viral linkbait and infographics should not be ignored. It talks about how to brainstorm contnet to gathering data to presenting it with visual appeal to sharing the final copy.
  • Linkbait and Content Marketing: And now, a great walk-through of the mindset you need to be in to provide some amazingly great viral content that people will share and which will drive links to boost visibility for your business.
  • What to Look for in Freelance Writers: When you’re hiring a writer to produce content, you want to create a good business relationship with clearly communicated deliverables (which is the case in more than just writing engagements). Don’t commit to long term engagements unless you’re really sure about the writer, though.
  • Making the Leap: Egocentric to Empathy in Content Marketing: Sometimes you need to look at your company in the eyes of someone else: your customers. Once you do this, you can engage differently and get a different view of how to market. This post explains the process of how to think like your customer.
  • 5 Reasons Copywriters Need to Get Data … or Get Out of the Business: If you can put numbers and accountability on your copywriting skills, you are a winner. The future sees copywriters as having more responsibilities in analysis, since writing content nowadays just isn’t enough.
  • The 7 Deadly Sins of Content Promotion: Don’t be greedy. Don’t be gluttonous. Don’t show envy. Each of these sins is dissected as a strategy, a problem, and a solution.
  • 6 Content Tips: How to Write When You Have Nothing to Write About: I got a comment on my blog that other day from someone who felt she wasn’t inspired to write anything for her blog. But there are so many things you can write about! While this won’t have you scribbling notes (okay, typing posts) for months, you might be inspired to improve upon your content development strategy for good SEO. The more original content you have, the better your SEO. Always remember that.
  • A Kick Ass Guide to Growing Your Website Traffic Online: From platform to linking strategy, this guide covers everything needed to build a site that is networked enough for some good traffic.
  • 10 Steps to Writing Better Content : I love this tip – “write drunk, edit sober.” Aren’t you more creative when you’re a little tipsy?
  • 6 Steps to Making Your Infographic Work: Is your infographic going to resonate with your audience? By doing research among a social audience, communicating with your designer, getting outsiders’ opinions, including links, and publishing the infographic with all of these considerations intact, your infographic can travel far.
  • A Quick and Dirty Guide to Content Marketing: Whether you’re creating written or video content, cornerstone or spicy content, content that tells stories or solves problems, there’s an approach that will suit you and your readers. This article touches upon different content marketing angles and email autorepsonders to sell yourself and your services.
  • Copywriting Essentials from A to Z: From Action to Zing, here is what you need to keep in mind for a great copywritten piece of content that will grab the attention of the people who you’re looking to connect with.
  • Great Content for SEO: Simpler than You Ever Imagined: Build a survey, send it to your customers, record their responses, and leverage it to build what people want (via search, of course). Simple, right?
  • 21 Ways to Create Compelling Content when You Don’t Have a Clue: You can steal ideas, borrow name recognition, get inspired, and do so much more to create some really good content that works.
  • Infographics or Articles: Which Type of Content is Best for Your Idea?: This article takes a deep look at infographics versus linkbait articles and explores why you should do one (or the other).
  • A 5 Minute Guide to More Persuasive Copywriting: Or in five words: Write for a real person.

PPC Marketing & Paid Search

Public Relations

  • How to Create a Good Blogger Pitch : This is the best blogger outreach post I have ever read.
  • The Front Page Isn’t What it Used to Be: This is a simple reminder why you can’t rely on your website alone. You need to be firmly grounded on all major platforms serving as the “new front page” and aim for placement throughout these new mediums.
  • 9 Essential Tips for Warm Blogger Outreach Pitches: Every so often, I share a blogger outreach article because people always do it wrong. My key takeaway from this article is to do your research. No, seriously. People pitch me all the time despite the fact that I clearly say I don’t want pitches. Obviously, the research part is overlooked. I wonder how much traction those PR campaigns really get if that’s the case?!
  • Blogger Outreach Guide: How to Get Started: If you’re tasked with doing outreach on behalf your client or perhaps for yourself, it’s important to find the right people. This guide gives you tips on creating that pitch and finding people who can seek out the right people — your community manager.
  • Recommendations for Blog Commenting as a Marketing Strategy: Blog commenting can be a great way to market yourself and your business if you do it right. This writeup explains the benefits and illustrates best practices for making it worth your time.
  • 8 Tips for Blogger Outreach: Networking is important, but how do you reach the influencers you’re looking for? I blogged about this last year, and while those points are incredibly valid, so are these: flattering people on Twitter, finding them on a social network (especially if you can’t locate the email address), searching for opportunities via Twitter, and other lesser-known tactics are discussed.
  • Outreach Tips and Tricks to Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness: If you’ve done any personal outreach, doing something above and beyond can certainly help make that campaign a bit more effective for you. The suggestions here are quite smart yet simple to implement.

Social Media

  • Why Most Social Media Departments Fail: This is my own post and most popular post on Techipedia this year, highlighting some case studies encountered by myself and colleagues on why social media sometimes just doesn’t work for companies. Hint: it’s in the approach and communication, not in the fact that viability isn’t possible in some industries.
  • Process: A Pragmatic Approach to Social Business: A social media planning process requires 8 full steps to execute and measure effectively: education, research, strategy, planning, implement, manage, measure, renewal.
  • Blog SMO Guide: How to Apply Social Media Optimization to Your Blog in 33 Steps: This is a HUGE list of great tips to make your site social friendly. Tips like minimizing obstacles to comment, displaying voting icons after the article, having a well-written title, and more are discussed in this lengthy article.
  • Why Social Media Departments Fail: This post speaks from the heart (and is my own) on why social media marketing initiatives are completely useless without goals and a cohesive marketing plan.
  • How To Find The Perfect Network For Your Content Promotion Campaign: Today, we look at all of the social media sites out there to see what’s worth promoting where.
  • 14 Best Practices for Long Term Social Media Success: These are the traits that successful online businesses exhibit day in and day out: they have governance and rewards, guidelines, a training program, an editorial program, a mission and purpose, and they serve their customers and prospects.
  • 10 Considerations When Creating a Social Media Policy: If you ever need to create a social media policy, look at this list of advice for things you may need to consider:  an understanding of chain of command, disclosure information, monitoring of usage, and much more.
  • 21 Types of Social Content to Boost Your SEO: Viral content helps build links. Whether you write something that’s passionate, that’s controversial, that’s epic, that lists a bunch of great resources, and that’s visual, you can definitely reap benefits if you truly understand what a social audience is looking for.
  • Who Should Represent Your Brand on the Social Web?: Whether you create a social media council that integrates many team members or you take it on yourself, humanizing the brand is a primary goal for social media, since it’s all about human interaction. How do you approach it?
  • The Social Media Marketer’s SEO Checklist: Social media influences SEO, so this post tells social media marketers how to best craft your social messages to yield the best SEO value for search effectiveness.
  • Tracking the KPIs of Social Media: With social media analytics, you should track traffic, fans/followers/ social interaction, and how well the content is performing. Here are tools on how you can do these measurements.
  • Social Media for Small Business: 6 Effective Strategies: Businesses starting in social media may need this most, but I think it is valuable to any business. First, the customer is always right. (Well, almost.) Second, sometimes you have to pay. Third, followers are just a number. Fourth, [constant] self promotion won’t help you. Fifth, benefit from expertise. Finally, there are people you can hire to help.
  • An Insider’s Guide to Social Media Etiquette: I’ve written about social media etiquette myself, but this one makes it more business-centric, like not using logos (if you’re representing yourself as a person, not a company, that is) and refraining from retweeting praise about you. This is good stuff.
  • Don’t Abuse Social Network Pings: Social media gives you ways to connect with people you know easily, but there are certain etiquette rules to take into consideration.
  • Social Media for SEO vs. Customer Engagement: You should be doing social media for customer engagement (relationships) but also for SEO value. Are you coordinating both efforts? Are you doing both?
  • How to Grow Social Media Leads: New Research: The more you blog, the better it is for your leads. Also, the more Twitter followers you have, the better you will fare as well in leads. They call that social proof. You also get better results with a larger Facebook fan base. Do these findings surprise you?
  • Social Media Consultants, Experts, and Gurus, Oh My!: Earlier this year, I worked on a campaign with a client who wanted nothing more than LOTS of new followers. He didn’t know why he wanted it, but he wanted it. Naturally, it felt odd to just build numbers for him, and I gave him the explanations as to why. This is the blog post that I could’ve used before the campaign to align expectations. Numbers aren’t everything.
  • 6 Areas of Your Business that Should be Listening: Amber Naslund and Jay Baer show the benefits of listening across sales, marketing, customer service, R&D, HR, and management.
  • The Rules of Social Media Engagement: It’s important to put rules into place when you involve yourself in the social media space. It makes you more productive as a company. This post includes 25 guidelines that you should consider when crafting those company policies.
  • 9 Companies Doing Social Media Right and Why: Here are some good case studies of businesses who do social media the right way. What’s your business doing?
  • Secrets of Social Media Revealed 50 Years Ago: Research by Ernest Dichter in 1966 has found that there are 4 motivations that people use to communicate about brands: product involvement (a great experience), self involvement (sharing information about oneself), other involvement (desire to help others), and message involvement (a great message). Do you think all of this is still the same today? This and other discoveries still hold true.
  • Optimizing Social Media Campaigns for Search: Together, search and social are extremely powerful. Come up with ideas, get your external content on your main site, get tracking in place, optimize, and consider load times to create a powerful social and search machine.
  • Your Secret Weapon for Standout Social Media Success: In a real time world, your response times need to change. That means when someone wants your attention on social media, you better reply within minutes. This post includes the various desired response times for a variety of channels.
  • The Number One Least Asked Question in Social Media…Why?: Why are you as a business engaging in social media? Why should your customers follow you? Because you rock? Do your customers think so?
  • 50 Kloutless Ways to Get Value from Twitter: …or any social network, really. Summary: network (the verb).

Social Networks

Usability

Conversion Rate Optimization/Landing Pages

Affiliate Marketing

  • 12 Ways to Pick the Best Affiliate Program: Looking to engage in affiliate marketing? There are dozens of programs out there. How should you choose the best? Consider product, competition, EPC, tools, and other elements to make the best educated decision.
  • When to Launch an Affiliate Program: If you have an online marketing program that’s working well, it may be time to get an affiliate program on board as well. But do you have the staff to handle it? Can you handle the inbound support? These are questions to ask before you launch.

Brand Evangelism

  • Inspiring Brand Ambassadors: If you’re looking to help get your customers to do word of mouth marketing for you, a brand ambassador program is something to look into. This guide lists the benefits and explains why and how you should proceed.
  • Fans Aren’t Just for Rockstars: For big brands, it’s time to connect more closely with your customers. This is a process you can follow that makes that all possible.

Web Development

  • Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed: This is a theoretical way to view UX, complete with why you cannot design it (it’s based on how the user interacts with the product). But you can design for UX.
  • 7 Simple Fixes for Your Small Business Website: Does your site have good navigation? A contact page? A good About page? Title tags that are informative? Well, if not, it’s time to review these guidelines and create a website that truly will resonate with your prospects and customers.
  • HTML5 and SEO: New Strategies for Optimizing Code: If you code for SEO, you’ll find that HTML5 takes things to a different level. This article discusses some tags you can do without (as they’re deprecated) and tags you should start considering instead.
  • What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO?: Each major element of code is dissected with some indications as to how it will fare with the search engines.
  • Top 15 Free Things Every E-Commerce Website Should Do After Launching: Once you launch a new site, you need to think about product feeds, a sitemap file, getting analytics set up, and much more.
  • How to Make Your Website Look More Legitimate: Beyond having a presence online that you are happy to share with legitimate pages and information, to be truly legitimate, you need to get a media kit, press mentions, social profiles, a reusable logo, and a website that looks very professional.
  • Does Good Web Design Really Matter?: Do you hate some websites? Why? If your issues stem with bad design, you’re with 94% others who agree that design can make or break a website. Therefore, it’s paramount to create a design that really resonates with your potential viewers

Community Management

  • 8 Ways to Deal with Negative Comments in Online Communities: There are many things you can do with negative comments: ignoring it, lawyering up, changing it to a positive discussion, removing the comment (and possibly banning the commenter), educating the customer, confess and beg forgiveness, fight, or own it. What are you?
  • 8 Ingredients that Make a Community Manager: Who are the best community managers? They need to be passionate, available, and good communicators.
  • What Does a Community Manager Do?: There’s no one-size-fits-all job description for a community manager. It’s actually a LOT of work. Here’s what it might look like, though.
  • The 2011 State of Community Management: Year after year, this report has served as one of  the best resources for community managers. It covers strategy, leadership, culture, content, and so much more. It’s a 95 page report primarily based on survey findings of 109 individuals which you can download as PDF for your personal pursuits.
  • How to Build a Great Contest: This is a case study of how a contest was run successfully via Twitter and Facebook. What contest ideas are you trying for your business?

Reputation Management

  • Our Online Reputation Management Playbook: Ever search Google and see “companyname scam”? The writer has. Here’s how he successfully conquered this reputation management problem.
  • How to Combat Fake Reviews While Managing Online Reputation: Who cares if you have some negative reviews? Try to get as many positive (legitimate!) reviews as you can and you’ll find that conversions will soar.
  • Using Google Analytics to Monitor Your Brand: With a few tweaks, you can learn a lot about how your brand is faring across search results.
  • How to Avoid Negative Reviews and Bad Publicity for Your Online Store: The more someone is unhappy about an experience, the more likely his friends have to hear about it. (Surprisingly, though, in this case, the store was unnamed even though the writer says that “word travels fast.”) Still, the lessons to take away from any negative experience is that marketing and customer service go hand in hand, and you could truly make a difference and prevent negative reputation marks against your business if you actually are proactive about what people are saying about you.

Web Analytics

Domaining

  • Practical Domaining: People buy domains for many reasons — for search traffic, misspelled words, exact match, and more. If you’re into the art of domaining, you already know this. If you’re not but want to learn, here is your introductory guide.

Video Marketing

  • Video Posts: Are You Doing it Wrong?: If you ever blog about video, and many people don’t realize this, it’s not useful just to include the video without any detail. I can’t stress how many sites just let you submit the video without ANY detail whatsoever. Here are the steps you should follow to get people passionate about what you’re posting. The video alone still doesn’t cut it.
  • 8 Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Results: With YouTube being a powerful search engine, it’s the go-to place for video marketing. Compelling videos coupled with a branded page can yield great results.

Email Marketing

  • Top 10 Ways to Use Email Marketing Effectively (Email Marketing): Whether you’re focused on design, goals, or social media promotion, email marketing should be considerate of some of these elements so that you do create an effective campaign that works.
  • 4 Steps to Understanding the ROI of Your Newsletter: By understanding email marketing metrics, defining a baseline using historical data, assessing ROI, and testing (and retesting, of course), you can learn much about how to improve your newsletter for greater engagement.
  • 4 Mobile Email-Marketing Tips: People are reading their email on mobile, so it is important for you to think about mobile email marketing in the same way that you do regular email marketing.
  • 5 Email Marketing Tips for Increased Open Rates: If you’re looking to get people to open those emails you’ve sent, you should make a good first impression, time your emails appropriately, format the email in such a way to avoid spam filter traps, get rid of those folks who just don’t read the emails, and continually optimize the sign-up process.
  • Email is (Still) Important and Here’s Why: Email is my best method of communication, but so many people think that Facebook and Twitter have replaced that. (Oh, and phone calls.) Nope. Not for everyone. Email has suffered the fate of value theory — but for me, it’s incredibly valuable. Do you think email is dead?
  • 7 Email Case Studies: Publishers Who Forget About the Fold: Did you forget about the fold? Your core messaging should be easily visible. Don’t require people to scroll down.This report dissects many emails and shows where they failed.

General Online Marketing (and everything else)

  • 109 Ways to Make Your Business Irresistible to the Media: Want to be quoted in the media? You can be — just follow some of these steps, which include being social, thinking visually, launch a brand new product, write an e-book, give the interviewer control of the discussion, and much more.
  • The Ultimate Small Business Website Guide: This guide is truly ultimate. It talks about the benefits of creating a website, how to plan one, how to set one up, how to integrate social media and email marketing, and how to review your analytics.
  • Drip, Drip, Drip – Building Prospect Trust One Drop at a Time: A lot of websites fall into this trap of assuming someone checking out your site wants to buy now or later, but this thought process is fundamentally incorrect. It’s important to build relationships via your website for these people to convert when they’re ready.
  • A Holistic Approach to Marketing: Integrating Social, Search, and People: A great online marketing initiative integrates search, social, and paid together.
  • The Noob Guide to Online Marketing: This exhaustive article also contains a tremendous infographic that you might as well hang up as a poster on your office wall; it covers the gamut from social media to analytics to PPC, email marketing, lead gen, and whatever else. The “Wheel of Marketing,” as he calls it, has so many spokes.
  • Jedi Mind Tricks: 17 Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People: Using support from numerous studies, these tips help you get what you want, which is great in business. For example, if something happens often enough, you’ll be persuaded. How many of you have friends or family that were Facebook holdouts but eventually joined due to the prominence around you? Also, did you know that men prefer email than face to face discussions? (This woman prefers email too.)
  • 7 Repeat Business Strategies for Small Businesses:  Why does repeat business make sense? Because they’re targeted, easy to reach, cheap, and there’s no middle man. So here’s what you can do as a small business to get more repeat purchases.
  • Marketing to Early Adopters: This is a great article from Mukund Mohan on how he identified adopters and reached out to them for his business.
  • 21 Big Marketing Ideas for Small Marketing Budgets: I really like the tips in this article because they don’t require the deepest of pockets to implement. You’ll probably just need a community manager who can be active on blogs, message boards, social networks, and blogging to succeed at most of these tips.
  • My Dad Taught Me Cashflow with a Soda Machine: …or how to teach your child to become a kick ass entrepreneur. The lessons you can pick up from selling soda are really applicable in business, and I love the approach.
  • Tasty Ideas to Maximize Online Marketing for Events: This post explains how to promote an event with a model focused on Audience > Objectives > Tools > Tactics > Measurement. Plus, there are 27 great online marketing and public relations tactics that can help!
  • The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur: This isn’t a bad article, but he should have used numbers and not roman numerals or whatever he did there. :) It also has a good number of questions and answers from readers.
  • 100 Ways to Connect: Relationship building at its finest.
  • 14 Best Practices for Brands to Grow their Audiences in Social Media: Successful brands have gotten to that point because they designed an effective channel strategy, constructed a listening framework, initiated training programs, served customers and prospects, among other things that kept them at the front of their customers’ minds and hearts.
  • Know. Like. Trust.: This is a reminder of the failures of many businesses with their own marketing; they forget to get consumers to know them, to like them, and to trust them.
  • Email Overload: The Secret to Getting Inbox Zero Every Time: Answering email is good customer service. Good customer service is good marketing. Why this falls on deaf ears for perhaps 85% of people I email to is beyond me. These are my personal tips on how you can truly conquer your inbox. As we speak, it’s over 3 months after that post was written and I still have nothing in my inbox.

Thanks again to HubSpot’s Marketing Grader for making it possible for you to enjoy these great content pieces again on Techipedia. Again, it’s a fantastic tool: it analyzes all of your marketing — not just your website — reviewing over 30 different factors and then providing an overall Marketing Grade on a 1-100 scale, including:

  • Competitive Benchmarking: Is my marketing more or less effective than my competition?
  • Lead Generation: Are my marketing efforts generating enough leads and sales?
  • Mobile Marketing: Is my web presence optimized for mobile devices?
  • Social Media: How effectively are we using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in our marketing?
  • Blogging: Is my blog driving results that justify the time investment, or are we wasting time doing the wrong things?
  • Overall Analysis: What are the strong points and shortcomings in our marketing?

Marketing Grader also outlines why you should take particular steps to improve and what your top priorities should be. With customized action items to help the top of your funnel, the middle of your funnel, and your analytics, Marketing Grader makes it easy for you to figure out your next steps.

Don’t forget that you can get this all monthly (plus more!) by signing up to my monthly newsletter, reduced 80% for a limited time :)

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2012/internet-marketing-posts-2011/feed/ 38 Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010 http://www.techipedia.com/2011/internet-marketing-posts-2010/ http://www.techipedia.com/2011/internet-marketing-posts-2010/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:43:48 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/?p=3120 [ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Want more than what you see here? Get the monthly newsletter, new for 2011.

As many of you know, I have an annual tradition of giving back to the community on my birthday, which is why this year is no different. Of course, then, today is my birthday, & it’s a big one. Today, I’m 30.

I started this “best posts” idea 5 years ago & it’s grown huge. 2010 by far was the biggest year yet in the Internet Marketing realm. That’s why this is the biggest post I’ve ever written (with over 10,000 words). In honor of my 30th birthday, I have 300 posts.

Here’s how I do it: I read & review hundreds — thousands — of articles yearly, on all Internet Marketing topics from SEO to social media to general entrepreneurship (new for 2010!), also gathering intelligence via their rankings on top social sites & by stumbling upon new items in my feed reader. Since I can’t read everything written by the Internet Marketing community, I ask my Twitter & Facebook followers for their own recommendations. Based on specific criteria, normally actionable takeaways & evergreen content, I review the content & post it here to share with Techipedia readers & new visitors. The content is typically introductory but occasionally more intermediate/advanced, so there’s a mix that should work for everyone.

This list is very long, but I hope it’s not any less valuable. I’m sure you’ll have a year (or more) of reading to do, but it’s worth it to empower you with all this great content that has been written by brilliant peers. Enjoy!

Special note: This is the LAST wrap up post you’ll ever receive via Techipedia. If you found this content valuable & would like to receive new articles on a monthly basis, please subscribe to the monthly newsletter, available at a super low rate for a limited time.

Social Media: Getting Started, Implementation, and Execution

Social Media (and Beyond): Small Business

Social Media: Hiring and in the Workplace

Social Media: Measurement and ROI

Social Media: General

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Leveraging Other Social Media Sites

Blogging

Reputation Management

Content Development/Marketing

Web Development and Website Strategy

Video

SEO: Strategy

SEO: Information

Link Building

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Analytics

Usability

Landing Pages

Local/Mobile Search

(Personal) Branding

Building a Brand/Brand Evangelism

Public Relations

Community Management/Engagement

Entrepreneurship

General Online Marketing

Everything Else Under the Sun

And in case 300 wasn’t enough, here’s the best 2010 posts on Techipedia:

Badges

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Closing Thoughts

It’s been a great year. My son is thriving and just started walking. He brings a lot of great joy to our family. My book has been published in three languages: Italian, Portuguese, and German, and the German editorial team is already working on a second edition. I’ve been involved in some incredible projects, including plans for my own social startup (to be announced), and I think there will even be another one in the works very soon.

I’m starting to act as an advisor on several new social projects created by some highly motivated colleagues and peers; the social space looks extremely promising and there’s no shortage of some excellent things coming our way these next few months. I’m open to working with you on your social startups, so please be in touch.

I’m always interested in hearing about how I can help you on your business at any level, so please do connect with me and let’s see what we can do together.

Best wishes to you, your colleagues, and your families this year!

Photos by Shutterstock.

This post takes me an entire year to write due to reading and reviewing the posts and ultimately compiling them, and therefore consumes hundreds of hours of time. Since it happens every single year, please do not reproduce this on your site in any format. If you’d like to share this with your audience, please link to the post.

Oh, and if you like this post and/or want to say happy 30, I’m finally throwing in my Amazon Wishlist.

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2011/internet-marketing-posts-2010/feed/ 71 Analysis of Five Top Blogs and What You Can Learn from Them http://www.techipedia.com/2010/five-blog-analysis/ http://www.techipedia.com/2010/five-blog-analysis/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:41:05 +0000 Guest Author http://www.techipedia.com/?p=2611 [ Analysis of Five Top Blogs and What You Can Learn from Them is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Inspired by my recent post on How Young is Too Young?, I was contacted by 16-year-old blogger Onibalusi Bamidele who has guest-written this post.

There is a trend among many new (and even old) bloggers. I discovered many of them tend to quit, lose hope, or even become less dedicated to their blogs when it seems they are not seeing any result for a period of time.

In blogging, however, we all know that there is nothing like overnight success and you will only get what you put into it. If you invest your time and hard work into your blog, then you surely will get something great in return.

This post will analyze five of the most popular blogs on the Internet and will detail a lot of factors about them that contribute to their success; hopefully, you can examine some of the factors and improve on yours.
The following blogs will be analyzed:

  1. ProBlogger
  2. Copyblogger
  3. Daily Blog Tips
  4. Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog
  5. Entrepreneur’s Journey

The following factors will be analyzed:

  1. Their blog age.
  2. Their domain name
  3. Their post type – length, frequency and value.
  4. Their monetization strategy
  5. What they have in common

Their Blog Age

I will be using when they started writing blog posts to calculate their blog age which can be found in their blog archives. Based on my findings, Problogger started in 2004, Copyblogger started in 2006, Daily Blog Tips started in 2006, Steve Pavlina’s Blog started in 2004, and Entrepreneur’s Journey started in 2004.

You will notice that all these blogs did not just start yesterday or even last year. They have been around for years now. Yet many bloggers who have not even spent up to a year on their blogs keep complaining about not achieving any results. It is true everybody loves success but we should also not fail to understand that success does not come overnight; it comes after a lot of hard work, persistence, and patience.

I have yet to see a top blog that has not been around for years now, and that is what brings about the joy of it.

Similarly, this is applicable to the “make money online” niche. If that becomes too easy, then everybody will be doing it and it will lose its value.

It takes hard work and patience to make it offline and this is exactly applicable online.

Their Domain Name

Another great thing to analyze from these blogs is their domain name. I personally believe that your domain name will affect your blogging career and how people look at your blog.

It is very important to have a domain name that communicates what you blog about without even visiting it to get that assurance. To that end, if we take a look at the above domain names, we will notice that almost all of them made it easy to know they are about blogging. The only exceptions are Steve Pavlina and Entrepreneur’s Journey which are naturally not in the blogging niche.

Another great thing to note from the above domain names is that they are user friendly and very easy to remember, and most of them are less than 15 characters.

Further, if we also take a close look at some of the domains, you will notice they try to establish a type of authority for the blogger. For example, by looking at ProBlogger, we are being told that the owner is not an amateur but a pro blogger.

Many bloggers will ask “why should I use a name like ‘problogger’ when I don’t know much about blogging?” I will answer this question in a simple manner. Darren registered this domain name when he was not known and when he had no readers. It is how you treat yourself that your readers will treat you. If you begin to call yourself a mediocre now then your readers will regard you as such and it will affect your overall blogging career.

It should be noted that a blogger can still succeed irrespective of the domain name, but the better and more memorable your domain name, the easier it is for you to succeed.

Their Post Type – Length and Value

Many bloggers believe that you should be writing long posts (like Glen does), but I can tell you it depends on you, your writing style, and how best you can convey your message.

Let’s take Techipedia for example. Most posts are long but you will discover that the posts here are not just rehashed junk and have great value to add to you (the reader). It is simple because Tamar discovered that is what works best for her and she adapted to it.

I also love writing long posts because I love to give great value in my posts and I believe that can be done better in a long post. For example, if I’m blogging to tell you the importance of traffic then I should also tell you how to get traffic in the same post.

Short posts also work but you must be ready to update regularly. You will notice Tamar does not post everyday (Glen also does not) because their single posts already convey a lot of information. I prefer this method than a blog that just passes out anything and posts everyday.


Below are the posting frequency of the above blogs:
ProBlogger provides updates everyday, Copyblogger updates almost everyday, Daily Blog Tips has provides updates everyday, Steve Pavlina updates anytime (but regularly), and Entrepreneur’s Journey updates anytime.

You will notice that only half of the above blogs update everyday, while the other half updates when they like but I think this your own choice should depend on your online business model.

If your online business model is to make money from advertisements like AdSense and banner ads then I will suggest you should be updating regularly because the type of visitors who work most with this model are the search engine visitors, so the more regularly you update your blog, the more search engine visit your content and the more you get indexed, the more traffic you will gain.

It is also important to note that these blogs are not just popular because of one thing but because they give value. If you take a look into their blogs, you will notice that they don’t just write anything but they write high quality and informative posts.

Their Monetization Strategy

Many bloggers are of the assertions that using some types of monetization strategy will hinder the growth of your blog; this is true and is not true. You should know that using some types of ads like Kontera (contextual advertising) and the likes on your blog will irritate a large percentage of your readers but using AdSense the right way will not affect your blog.

Even the most popular of these blogs (ProBlogger) uses AdSense and banner ads and I don’t think it is affecting the growth of the blog.

My suggestion is for you to start monetizing now so that you curb the expectation of “free” amongst your readers. For example, my blog is three months old. I have never written a product review on my blog and my posts average 30 comments. However, after writing a product review on my blog recently, after 24 hours I only had 3 comments on the post (which is very unusual). This means I have built an audience who love free information only. Now I must work on correcting this.

All of these blogs also make use of affiliate marketing and it works for them since they have a large audience. However, what I don’t see them use is contextual ads, and I wouldn’t advise any new blogger to use it.

What They Have in Common

What all these bloggers have in common is passion and patience. If they were not patient then they would have quit years back. I am very sure there were some bloggers who started with them and were inspired by them but are no longer blogging. Blogging is really great only if you are ready to work hard and wait patiently for the results.

It is also important to notice that all these bloggers don’t just write anything on their blogs; they write valuable posts only.

MY TIP: Examine your blog now. Is it where you were some months ago or you are improving? It is true all of these blogs were not overnight successes and it took time for them to be where they are but you should also note that growth is a gradual process. If you are where you were six months ago then I would advise you to think twice and examine your blog to know what you are doing wrong, and if you can’t find any then my best advice for you will be to change your niche.

Onibalusi Bamidele is a 16 year old entrepreneur. He blogs at youngprepro.com where he shares some not so common tips. He also write about wordpress on wpkube.com. Get his free ebook on how to make it online.

Blog photo (bottom) by Shutterstock.

[ Analysis of Five Top Blogs and What You Can Learn from Them is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2010/five-blog-analysis/feed/ 44 Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 http://www.techipedia.com/2010/internet-marketing-posts-2009/ http://www.techipedia.com/2010/internet-marketing-posts-2009/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:00:09 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/?p=777 [ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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It’s my birthday! And like last year, I have a gift for you.

Every year, I read hundreds (thousands?) of articles on the topic of Internet Marketing, from SEO to social media to web usability and then some. And every year, I hand pick the best articles that I’ve read and compile them in a resource that I hope will last a long time. Here’s my list for 2008. Here’s 2007. Here’s 2006. I painstakingly go through these resources with the hopes that these posts will serve as references for you in years to come. Yes, that’s right. Despite the changing landscape, the articles I list here are typically those that I feel are “timeless” in that they could be referenced in the future and still have utility. These posts are not in response to newsworthy events, nor are they displayed in any particular order. They are strategic guides that hopefully will enhance your internet marketing experiences in the future.

Every year, I can only read so many articles. I try to keep this as exhaustive as possible, but even so, I don’t know every great resource. Like last year, I enlisted in help from my followers on Twitter, many of whom gave me some great posts to add to this list. If you’re looking to be included on 2010′s list, you now know what to do.

Like last year, if your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, there’s a badge for you to proudly celebrate this achievement on your site. Thanks again to David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design for creating them. Scroll down to the bottom of the post to grab the code you need for your post or site.

Without further ado, I now present to you the best internet marketing posts of 2009.

Social Media: Getting Started

  • Why You Have to Engage in Social Media, Even if You Don’t Want to (A Smart Bear): Jason Cohen (@asmartbear) makes a compelling argument into why social media must be considered, even if you have no interest in it. The article has examples of how social media worked too.
  • The Poetry of Social Networking to Court Customers and Invest in Relationships (Brian Solis): Brian Solis shares his foreword to Sean Percival’s book, MySpace Marketing.  In it, he offers some thought-provoking insights into what must be understood before going into social media marketing.  And… Brian Solis is the most eloquent writer I have ever seen in the blogosphere.  This post is really poetry, as are all his other writings and blog posts.
  • 40 Key Elements to Getting Started in Social Media (Louis Gray): Mike Fruchter writes an awesome blog post on Louis Gray’s blog about how to get involved in social media, from branding to blogging to Twitter to community. It’s definitely a worthwhile read.
  • Marketing on the Social Web: A Few Key Ingredients (Michael Fruchter): I love the graphic. But more than that, Mike’s post explains that social media is really about using social channels appropriately to communicate and converse — and as an extension of that, you might just end up being able to sell something. It’s really not that hard!
  • How Big Brands Can Start Testing Social Media (Conversation Agent): It’s really not that hard to get into social media marketing. It just requires a small shift in mindset.
  • Why Social Media is Scary (Steve Radick): Why is social media scary? There are challenges to be overcome by junior employees, developers, managers, and even senior leadership. Steve Radick tackles them all in this post.
  • The ABCs of Online Networking (Your Job Stop): I love Joanna Lord’s article — every single letter of the alphabet has an application in online networking. Don’t overlook these — at least consider them!
  • What Social Media is and What Social Media is Not (Louis Gray): So many people don’t get what social media is. Mike saves the day by straightening them out. :)
  • Is it Too Late to Catch Up? (Seth Godin): Seth Godin suggests ideas that will make social media slowly work for you as an organization.
  • Creating Your Social Media Plan (Outspoken Media): This good primer talks about securing your brand, setting metrics, knowing who you are, setting a presence, engaging, and assessing success.
  • 6 Steps for Creating a Social Media Roadmap and Plan (Green Marketing 2.0): Lorna Li writes very introductory post on what social media is and what you can do with it with some great insights.
  • A Corporate Guide for Social Media (Forbes): Forbes actually gets it when it comes to social media strategy in the workplace. Have a read and see for yourself.
  • 20 Ways to Drive Leads Through Social Media (Kyle Lacy): Here are some of the things you can do to start seeing some movement in this thing they call “social media marketing.”
  • 10 Tips for Social Media Marketers (PR Squared): Todd Defren tells you how to jump into social media marketing. What can you do today?
  • How to Create Measurable Objectives (Altitude Branding): We’ve talked about goals and strategies as it relates to social media marketing, but let’s break them down even further.

Social Media: Implementation and Execution

Social Media: Small Business

Hiring for Social Media

Social Media: Measurement and ROI

Social Media: General

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Leveraging Other Social Media Sites

Blogging

Reputation Management

  • Top 10 Ways to Save Your Online Reputation in 2009 (Small Business Trends): Business need to step up a notch and be a lot more personable to avoid a reputation management fiasco. Most companies need to start by simply acknowledging each and every incoming request from a customer as alluded to in #2.
  • Using Social Media For Reputation Management (DirJournal): Some of the tips here aren’t discussed in other articles, such as focusing on video and optimizing for local search.
  • How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard (aimClear): This is an incredibly huge post by Marty Weintraub on how to set up a reputation management monitoring dashboard, from doing the keyword research to finding additional keywords to monitor to actually building it. It has lots of screenshots and good actionable information that you can get started with today.
  • A Common Search Reputation Management Timeline (Search Cowboys): To summarize this post, if you don’t act to prevent reputation management issues, you’re doomed in the search world.
  • Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management (Vertical Measures): My book talks about how maintaining social media profiles can help you with your reputation management issues. This post echoes that sentiment and provides specific social networks that you should establish your presence on.
  • How Companies Should Respond to Negative Reviews (Outspoken Media): You shouldn’t always let criticism sit.  Sometimes you can respond.  What would you respond to, though?  How should you do it?
  • The Dos and Don’ts of Online Reputation Management (Search Engine Journal): This article is a simple easy list to follow for reputation management issues. Yes, you can push down negative search engine results, but you need a plan. You can get some direction on that plan by reading this article.
  • 5 Ways Negative Reviews are Good for Business (Small Business SEM): Matt McGee explains why negative reviews aren’t too bad after all. Just make sure you don’t get mentioned on Consumerist or Boing Boing. ;) (Of course, if you get there, it’s probably because your customers exhausted all avenues, which you should’ve been abreast of earlier!)
  • Online Reputation Management in the Future (WebProNews): Chris Crum interviews several experts about the possible diminishing impact of reputation management services — that is, when everyone has a reputation management issue, is it going to be less of a concern?
  • The Online Reputation Management Guide (Outspoken Media): Outspoken Media has produced an incredible online reputation guide. Rhea Drysdale talks about the nuances of assessing, building, tracking, and monitoring your reputation online.

Content Development/Marketing

Web Development

Video

SEO: Strategy

  • The SEM Toolbox: 79 Tools and Tips Every Search Marketer Should Have (SEO Contrarian): Ari Ozick provides a list of the best tools ever needed to do your job as a search engine marketer. Categories include backup tools, backlink discovery tools, link management tools, competitive research tools, keyword tools, domain tools, and a whole lot more.
  • SEO Hierarchy of Needs (Bruce Clay Blog): What step are you on when it comes to your SEO needs? What must you do next? This article by Virginia Nussey features a graphic that mimics Maslow’s hierarchy with an SEO spin.
  • Search Engine Ranking Factors (SEOmoz): Every year, SEOmoz comes out with a list of search engine ranking factors, which is incredibly valuable if you do anything remotely related to SEO or search engine marketing. Of course, it’s not perfect since the algorithm is kept under wraps, but this information has been guesstimated by trial and error.
  • Big List of Search Engine Ranking Factors (Huomah): David Harry revisits the discussion of the factors that he believes affects search engine rankings. And since he just came out with the recent training course SEO Dojo, which has been an incredible success, it’s a good idea to read this and listen.
  • What Aspects of SEO Should You Be Spending Most of Your Time On? (SEO Book): Peter Da Vanzo gives a good beginner’s guide for how to get into SEO for your new website.
  • Google is the Other Woman: The Relationship Algorithm (Foot in Mouth): This article uses an interesting parallel to judge how Google judges your site for algorithmic preference, but I actually would contend that all search engines typically follow the same rules of thumb. I love the analogies!
  • Future-Proof Your SEO (Huomah): Here’s an article which will actually likely be outdated in a few years, but I thought it was still good enough for the purposes of understanding the search landscape today with regards to what works and what doesn’t in search engine optimization.
  • The 100+ Ranking Variables Google Uses, and Why You Shouldn’t Care (SEO Book): In January, Aaron Wall predicted that search marketing success will come from engaging people. This is absolutely starting to take hold, especially as people actually talk about their favorite websites and search engines respond in kind. Twitter integration in search results, anyone?
  • Big Project, Small Budget: Where to Begin Your SEO Campaign (Search Engine Guide): If you are trying to SEO your site, you may want to start thinking about the areas you should put more emphasis on–perhaps because your budget constraints may limit you to only one of these areas.
  • 12 Easy Mistakes that Plague Newcomers to the SEO Field (SEOmoz): Even though this is a basic article on SEO, sometimes even seasoned professionals lose sight of this stuff. You can count on the “reciprocal linking” (read: link exchanges) to be a big mishap in “established SEO firms” from the amount of emails I get with that request daily across all my blogs. UGH :)
  • SEO for Large eCommerce Sites (AudetteMedia): Adam Audette is the SEO for Zappos. That means he knows a fair bit about optimizing billion-dollar business websites. He explores the techniques he uses for his big client in this article.
  • Creating a Sweet High Value Keyword List in 5 Minutes (SEO Book): Aaron Wall shows you how to create a high-value keyword research list in 5 minutes, then features a video on how to actually see what you just did.
  • 5 Free SEO Tools You’re Probably Not Using Yet (Search Engine Marketing Group): Here’s my question. Have you even heard of these yet?
  • How to Optimize for Conversion in Organic Search Results (Search Engine Land): SEO should be ROI-centric. If that’s not on your agenda, read this article and start thinking along the lines of driving real conversions.
  • 7 Rules for Writing URLs (Small Business SEM): If you do anything related to search engine marketing, understanding the URL structure and how to actually optimize it is important. Matt McGee offers tips on how to do this.
  • How Using Google AdWords Can Be the Best SEO Tool in Your Arsenal (RedFly Marketing): Dave Davis presents some pretty invaluable information on the potential for Google AdWords to be an incredible asset for search engine optimization. Yes, you read that right.
  • How to Up Your SEO Income by a Factor of 10 (SEO Book): Ari Ozick’s guest post for SEO Book is a darn good one – you won’t know until you test. It’s really that simple.
  • SEO Best Practices: New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data (SEOmoz): It’s time to start reevaluating your SEO tactics. SEOmoz has looked at what works and reported on their findings.
  • 5 SEO Essentials: Charting Effective Search Engine Optimization (Online Marketing Blog): Dana Larson’s approach toward effective SEO is great. Most people forget about that in such a social media centric world.
  • 6 Key Tactics for Organic Success (Search Engine Guide): Jen Laycock provides six great tactics for organic success: keywords, content, code, optimization, links, and patience. Yes, patience is a big one!

SEO: Information

  • Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations, Realities (Small Business SEM): This isn’t a “SEO how to” article. We always see enough of those. What this is is a good article by Matt McGee on what you should expect when you actually buy SEO consulting.
  • 5 Tips for Avoiding Deceptive SEO Companies (Small Business Trends): Since we’re talking about SEO, we might as well tell you what to look for so that you do NOT do business with some of these companies. Look for reputable companies if you ever need to focus on search engine optimization. Your rankings depend on it.
  • Setting Up an SEO Shop Overnight! (High Rankings): Jill Whalen rants about the “SEO shops” that give SEO the snake oil bad name. There actually are good SEOs out there.
  • 8 Short Steps to Forecast and Estimate SEO ROI (SEO ROI): Want ROI for your SEO efforts? Gab Goldenberg offers 8 steps on how exactly that can be achieved.
  • You Don’t Need SEO to Rank in Google (Sugarrae): Rae explains that SEO by itself simply isn’t the key to high rankings. Good content and marketing is really the key; SEO is just a secondary requirement.

Link Building

  • Get Your Link Building Requests Answered (Dream Systems Media): Matt Siltala writes an incredibly valuable article that answers how to get people to link to you once they’ve already established rapport with your competitors. He also brings in four experts who weigh in on the question.
  • Why Link Building May Not Work (Best SEO Blog): Sometimes your link building practices won’t work. Michael Martinez explains why beginning about 1/3 of the way down in this article.
  • How to Get Backlinks (Internet Marketing Techniques and Theories): Leo calls this post “very long.” I think I agree with him. :)
  • Secrets of How to Escape the Link Building Trap Now (SEO Theory): If you don’t want to build links, you might pursue these other opportunities to build links that don’t violate any guidelines. There’s also a service review in here for a link building program run by a pretty well known guy in the SEO space.
  • Buy Text Link Ads with these 101 Sneaky Tips (Search Engine Journal): Gab Goldenberg tries to stay under the radar when buying text links with 101 ideas that hopefully won’t get you caught.
  • Indispensable Link Building Applications (Wiep.net): Wiep Knol has a toolbox filled to the brim of great link building applications. If you do any link building at all, make sure to familiarize yourself with these applications.
  • Link Building Techniques, Interactive Agency Approach (Zeta Interactive): I get about 4-5 link building requests across multiple web properties a day. When reading this article, I realize that for 99.9% of these requests, none of these techniques (personalized requests, transparency, knowing the target website, etc.) are employed at all. Is that really so difficult? I guess it is when you outsource link building to interns.
  • A Big Bunch of Link Building Ideas (Search Engine Land): Debra Mastaler is a link building genius and when she talks, I always listen. In this article, she explores the consequences of actually linking out to other websites and what you can do to build other types of links.
  • Link Building from A to Z (SEOmoz): Wiep Knol is one of the foremost link building experts and has covered an entire alphabet of ways to get new links.
  • 10 Goals for Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links” (Search Engine Land): Garrett French writes a great in-depth guide on how you can build links, suggesting countless tactics and link prospect sources.
  • Link Building Evaluation Journal (Search Engine Journal): Building links to a website? How could you enhance your link portfolio? Dave Snyder suggests different ideas for different metrics of the link, be them the age of a domain, the anchor text, or the relevant authority of the link page.
  • 10 Link Building and Tracking Tools for SEO (Online Marketing Blog): Got links? Start testing them. This Top Rank Marketing blog post explores ten possible tools from which to do this.
  • 11 Effective, Efficient Ways to Use Limited Time to Build Links (Search Engine Land): If you’re tasked with building links but yet do not know how to manage your time, you might want to read this and follow Debra Mastaler’s suggestions.
  • Link Mixology: The 12 Kinds of Links Your Site Needs (Michelle MacPhearson): Michelle MacPhearson writes a good point on what kinds of links you should be getting if you intend to market your website.
  • 21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries (Search Engine Land): Not all link building tips and tricks have to be Link Building 101. Here are 21 great advanced tactics that can help you get a little more out of link building.

PPC

Affiliate Marketing

Analytics

Usability

Landing Pages

Local/Mobile Search

  • Mobile Search Guide (cellphones.org): Now more and more people are using their cell phones and searching on their favorite search engine. My phone is old as heck but even I do it. But if you’re a website creator, have you optimized for mobile search? If not, perhaps you should, since your visitors might end up going elsewhere.
  • Local Search Ranking Factors (David Mihm): Just like there are SEO ranking factors, there are also local search ranking factors.  David Mihm gives you an exhaustive list of them for your perusal.
  • A Closer Look at the Local Search Data Providers (getListed.org): Any local business presence will want to make sure its information is accurate online.  Take a look at the providers listed to figure out where your information needs to be updated.
  • Blocking and Tackling: 10 Fundamentals of Local SEO (Search Engine Land): David Mihm, our resident local expert, provides a basic list of what you should do as a local business to get ranked in search engines.

Personal Branding

Building a Brand/Brand Evangelism

Public Relations

Community Management/Engagement

General Online Marketing

Everything Else Under the Sun

Badges

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Closing Notes

The year 2009 was incredibly huge for me. I gave birth to my first child, a little boy, who is my pride and joy. I published a social media marketing book. I’ve made great relationships, big and small, and I’ve worked on some fantastic projects that I could have only dreamed of just a few years ago.

In the past decade, I’ve graduated college, married the love of my life, switched careers to find my passion, and now I live through it every day. Every morning, I wake up excited to see what the day will bring. I’m aiming higher for the next 10 years — let’s see if I can top this. I’m truly excited to see what next year will bring.

May you all have a happy, successful, and wonderful 2010.

[ Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2010/internet-marketing-posts-2009/feed/ 120 Apple Gets More Serious About Using Twitter, but Why it Doesn’t Matter http://www.techipedia.com/2009/apple-twitter-social-media/ http://www.techipedia.com/2009/apple-twitter-social-media/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:16:11 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/?p=623 [ Apple Gets More Serious About Using Twitter, but Why it Doesn’t Matter is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Apple, the company behind aesthetically pleasing hardware that keeps fanboys drooling, has recently joined Twitter. If you take a look at any one of their four accounts, you’ll notice one thing: they’re not using Twitter to converse but to broadcast. Effectively, they’re porting their press release information to the wide open, and perhaps going a little more granular by featuring content specific to elements of iTunes.

itunesmusicsmallFirst, I’m going to say kudos to Apple for trying involve themselves in the world of social media. I’m going to stop there, though. Unfortunately, they still don’t quite “get it.” Let’s envision this scenario: a user has a support issue about an Apple product. If it was a Comcast product, you’d get a near immediate response from Frank Eliason, the company’s Director of Digital Care. Apple has no such protocol in place, and at this point, there is no engagement. If you used Twitter to direct a complaint to iTunes, if and only if they bother to monitor and respond to their replies, they would send you to their faceless and non-responsive customer support channel.

I don’t expect Apple to port their customer service wholly over to Twitter, but Apple does little in terms of customer service issues altogether. They have discussion forums that are visited by moderators who merely police the content itself, but change never comes from suggestions offered in the forum itself or in the posts, even if hundreds of users contribute the same identical observations. Members are encouraged by other members (not moderators, and certainly not Apple) to submit product feedback, though if you take a look at that page, there are a lot of items. And once you’ve sent the email off, that’s all. No acknowledgment. In fact, of the many issues I’ve submitted over the years (and I know countless others have had problems with as well), nothing has been addressed. It makes me wonder if I’m sending my requests to a wall (or for your tech geeks, /dev/null) or if people really work for Apple (outside their marketing and engineering departments).

Apple’s approach toward using Twitter is likely motivated by a desire to connect with their customers. But connecting should be a two-way street. Social media is exactly that: “social.” At this point, it might as well be that these iTunes accounts are managed and maintained by interns who have no power to effectuate change. Yet listening is incredibly important. It can help boost your “ratings” among the crowd, turning a casual fanboy into a die-hard fanboy. It can turn a prospective buyer into a customer. It can instill faith that your customers have in your company. If not for your customers, you’d be nowhere, right?

If you’re going to dive in the social media world, you need to understand what it means to be “social.” That is, to promote your customers and not just your own agenda. Empower them. At the minimum, let them know that they are being heard (and yes, bring their concerns to those who actually can do something).

If you’re a company looking to dive into social media, you should be doing more than just broadcasting and taking advantage of your followers. Show them why you deserve to be followed by letting them voice their concerns — and by taking those back to the people who really can make a difference. Don’t wait until there’s a PR firestorm before you actually take action, Phil Schiller. Be proactive and not reactive. (To that end, the fact that apps are killing music is still an issue voiced by many of your customers on the proper channels — your forums and via the feedback portal — but yet you refuse to acknowledge the issue. Perhaps a PR firestorm is what is needed to get Apple to fix that problem. I’m sure there are other similar concerns.) Clearly, it seems that Apple responds when it needs to put out fires despite wanting to make its customers happy. And that’s never a good business practice to follow.

If you’re considering social media marketing for your business, no matter what size your company is, listening and engagement is key. Letting your customers know that they matter is priceless. Being human isn’t such a difficult task. If you need help at a bank and speak to the teller but the teller remains silent, is that good business practice? Is that even professional?

Think about redoing your Twitter strategy if all you plan on doing is broadcasting. I’m sure that if iTunes actually included the customer in its feed, and if other Apple departments followed suit, there would be a whole lot more followers and satisfied customers. It can make all the difference in nurturing a positive perception of your company.

[ Apple Gets More Serious About Using Twitter, but Why it Doesn’t Matter is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2009/apple-twitter-social-media/feed/ 19 Internet Marketers of New York Charity Party: March 18, 2008 http://www.techipedia.com/2008/botw-charity-event-sesny/ http://www.techipedia.com/2008/botw-charity-event-sesny/#comments Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:22:32 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/2008/botw-charity-event-sesny/ [ Internet Marketers of New York Charity Party: March 18, 2008 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Danny Sullivan at the last BOTW EventI’m still going through SXSW notes and will eventually post some great recaps of sessions and events, but I’m still in conference mode.? With that said, it’s just two days away to the Internet Marketers of New York charity party in NYC (during SES NY) which is sponsored by the coolest guys on earth, Best of the Web.

What: A charity party.? Your $40 at the door goes straight to a charity.
When: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 8PM until 12AM.
Where: Black Finn NY, 218 East 53rd Street
Who: Yours truly and a bunch of awesome people who are flying in to NY to attend the Search Engine Strategies conference
Why: Because you know you want to support a charity and hang out with some of the biggest search industry leaders

Will I see you there?? I hope so!? Make sure to tell Greg Niland that I sent you. :)

[ Internet Marketers of New York Charity Party: March 18, 2008 is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2008/botw-charity-event-sesny/feed/ 0 SMX West ’08 Recap: Takeaways, Shout Outs, and Pictures http://www.techipedia.com/2008/smxwest08-recap/ http://www.techipedia.com/2008/smxwest08-recap/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:54:07 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/2008/smxwest08-recap/ [ SMX West ’08 Recap: Takeaways, Shout Outs, and Pictures is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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SMX West occurred last week, kicking off a bunch of conferences and meetups for yours truly (I’m headed to SXSW Interactive on Thursday followed by SES NY right after I get back, and then there’s the Saturday night Blogger Social event only a week later). As all conferences I’ve attended, it was a great one, and by far the best part was the smallness of the conference overall which really helped the networking efforts. As for the sessions I liveblogged, there were eleven in total (see the Search Engine Roundtable’s SMX West coverage for details). Here are some of the bigger takeaways for me:

  • We all know that the search landscape is changing. Louis Monier’s Wednesday keynote summarized the future in the world of search, as we’re looking at the following elements:
    • Human powered search: you get high quality content but since it’s human driven, the coverage isn’t as vast as we’d like.
    • Personalization: presenting results based on past activity. Monier suggests that it could be flawed, however, as in describing a “diamond:” what if a baseball enthusiast chooses to buy his wife a nice piece of jewelry?
    • Vertical search: focusing on a specialized area and building search upon this small slice. The biggest challenge is maintaining thousands of bookmarks to vertical search engines.
    • Natural language processing: search engines should begin to understand documents stored online. The big language barrier still exists, for example, when you refer to Java (“not coffee, not the island, but the programming language!”)
    • Semantic search: webmasters may not spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to describe what things mean since there’s no motivation for them to do so.
    • Artificial intelligence: he’s a bit skeptical of the immediate jump from the Flintstones to the Jetsons

    • I think these are all potential branches for search to take, though the first item about human powered search (or, more appropriately called “human powered research”) was interesting to me. I, like Loren Baker, feel that Mahalo is one of those sites that had its skeptics in the beginning but is growing to become a valuable research tool. I wouldn’t quite put it in the same category as “search,” but you can certainly find answers when you need them (and relatively quickly, in fact).

  • Social search is here to stay. Embrace it and take advantage of it. The evolution of social sites will be interesting to watch as speaker Chris Sherman suggests the following precepts that will govern the social search landscape in the future:
    • A combination of algorithmic and people mediated search (he mentions Ask.com’s Edison algorithm that utilizes a tag library based on user clicks)
    • Trust networks: only consuming content from individuals who you trust
    • Increased personalization
    • In the near future (and now), social search works best for non-text content (photos, music, videos, widgets, etc.) due to the search engines’ inability to parse through this kind of data as efficiently as text.
  • My favorite session by far (sorry, Rebecca) was the Generation Google session. In this session, 3 teen-aged entrepreneurs and one “normal teen” discussed their web behavior and that of their friends. One of the speakers was a kid I’ve admired from afar for over a year, Andrew Sutherland. Additional panel speakers were affiliate marketer Harrison Gevirtz of CPA Share, Chloe Spencer of the Neopets Cheat site, and Rand Fishkin’s little brother, Evan. First of all, I’m in general agreement with Rebecca and Michael that it would have been interesting to learn a little more about the kids’ histories: how did they get to where they were? What was their inspiration? How did they motivate themselves to continue (while still focusing on school and other “full time” activities)? The session, however, was more about understanding the behaviors of these savvy kids plus the actions of their peers. In reality, it was quite eye-opening (and funny). Some of my favorite quotes (as liveblogged) were quite memorable and include (with emphasis being mine):

    • Q: Where ads are published, what would you trust more? One in a magazine or one that is online?
    Evan: I’ll admit, I shoot the monkey on the advertisements.
    Harrison [the 15-year-old affiliate marketer]: Thank you.

    Danny: All your friends are using Google and some people are getting concerned that Google is getting too big. Is Google loved or hated between your friends?
    Andrew: I think Google is like using a public bathroom. [Everyone laughs.] Maybe that’s a bad example. Let’s say that it’s a public water fountain. Nobody cares what’s happening there, I guess. Nobody thinks that there’s a corporate thing behind it. It’s just a tool, like Firefox, in your arsenal of the computer.

    Danny: Do you search for yourself?
    Totally unanimously yes.
    Danny: Are your friends searching for themselves?
    Harrison: No, not really. I don’t think they have a web presence.
    Danny: Is it impressive to them?
    Harrison: Not my friends, but my mom tells people to search for me.
    Evan: You can’t search for me. Rand comes up.
    Everyone cracks up and Danny expresses his sadness for Evan. Rebecca Kelley from the audience says “Does Google ask ‘Did you mean Rand Fishkin?’”
    Danny: Does it ever suggest your father [Stephan Spencer] when you search for your name?
    Chloe: I don’t think so.
    Danny searches for Evan Fishkin and says it doesn’t say Rand, but “your mom comes up as #6.”

    All in all, the dialogue was funny, and from a newbie speaker point of view who would have been terrified at her first speaking gig, the questions made the kids feel quite comfortable. Besides my initial request for more information about these kids, I wouldn’t have requested for this session to have been handled any other way.

    If you want to read the entire Generation Google transcript (written to the best of my ability), go for it. Some of those answers may surprise you.

The Shout Outs

Aha, you thought I’d forget about the shout outs with all that conference summary. (Now why would I do that?) This time I will start by thanking the whole Third Door Media crew, especially Sean, Karen DeWeese, Michelle Robbins, Chris Elwell, and uh, do Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan count? ;) You guys arranged a superb conference and the food accommodations for a Kosher gal like me were excellent. Thank you for taking care of that.

I met a few new faces this time around, including Twitter buds Adam Audette and Guliz Sicotte. It was also nice to meet Gab Goldenberg, the super quiet Brian LaFrance, Duncan Morris and Will Chrichtlow (thank you for fixing your Facebook privacy prefs, Will), Stephen Peron (who seriously looks like Kyle from the 4400), John Carcutt, Darrell Long, Jay Young, Miguel Salcido, Hamlet Batista, Keri Morgret (thanks for helping us liveblog), Jeremiah Andrick and Nathan Buggia, Jordan Kasteler, Megan Slick, Scott Fish, and the famous Gabe Rivera from Techmeme. I will forever remember when you kicked my ass in Guitar Hero 3 (and this was his first time ever playing, whereas I own it).

And of course, I love this industry because conferences unite all of us from different parts of the world. Shout-outs to old friends and familiar faces (in no particular order): Neil Patel, Brent Csutoras, David and Irma Wallace, Jeff Quipp, Michael “Ponstar” Buonomo, Michael Dorausch, Andy Beal, Chris Boggs, Chris Winfield, my BFF the Lisa Barone (and her partners in crime, Robert Esparza and his sister Susan, Michael, and of course, Bruce Clay himself), the Mozzers (Jane–I put you first again!, Rebecca, Rand, Gillian, Jeff, Scott, Nick, and Sarah), Eric Lander, Tim Mayer, Todd Malicoat, Tony Adam, Matt Cutts, Susan Moskwa, Matt McGee, Gary Price and Patrick Crisp, Ken Jurina, Vanessa Fox (clothed), David Mihm, Rob Kerry, Rae Hoffman, Michael Gray, Jeremy Schoemaker, Jennifer Slegg, Greg and Barbara Boser, Dax Herrera, Cesar Serna, Ross Dunn, Jon Kelly, Keith Cramer, Daron Babin, Dave Roth, Kristen Wareham, Todd Friesen, Loren Baker, Sujan Patel, Marc Levin, Melissa Rische, Dave McClure, Abhilash Patel, Mike McDonald and Tiffany Doughty, Li Evans, Jim Hedger, Joe Whyte, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, and Marek whose name I cannot possibly spell. :)

And of course, thanks to Barry for the flight and hotel. You rock.

The Pictures

Here are some pictures of the event:

Susan, Ross, Darrell, David, Jeff, MattSusan, Bruce Clay, Lisa, and Robert Esparza
Becky Ryan, JenSense, ShoemoneyDanny Sullivan, Tim Mayer, and Miguel
Ken Jurina, Michael McDonald, Tiffany Doughty, some WebProNews Guy, and Loren BakerDave McClure
Danny Sullivan and Tamar WeinbergRock Band Heroes
Rae Hoffman, Lisa Barone, and Michael GrayDanny Sullivan
Gabe Rivera and Tamar WeinbergDavid Mihm and Jane Copland

Want more photos? Check out my Flickr photostream. Also, since I’m such a fan of schwag, Danny Sullivan had me report on the best schwag for SMX West at Search Engine Land. Sweet.

Up Next…

As mentioned earlier, I’m off to SXSW and will hopefully be trying something new: taking the sessions to my blog. My unofficial and tentative SXSW schedule is here (I won’t be able to make everything as some sessions overlap and it’s still over the Sabbath — so I won’t be blogging then) but these are topics I’m quite passionate about and I believe that the blogged sessions will be valuable to you as well. Let me know if you have any specific requests and I’ll try my best to comply. And if you’ll be there, leave a comment and let me know so that we can schedule a meetup! With 6,400 conference attendees, this is one conference I think I won’t see a lot of people at, but we can certainly try!

[ SMX West ’08 Recap: Takeaways, Shout Outs, and Pictures is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2008/smxwest08-recap/feed/ 12 Digg: Your Privacy is an Illusion http://www.techipedia.com/2008/digg-your-privacy-is-an-illusion/ http://www.techipedia.com/2008/digg-your-privacy-is-an-illusion/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:00:34 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/2008/digg-your-privacy-is-an-illusion/ [ Digg: Your Privacy is an Illusion is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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When Digg came out with its new social features, some folks applauded the move while others despised it. Nearly four months later, the social features appear to be here to stay.

But are they secure?

As Digg becomes more of a social network and less of a social news network (or a hybrid that incorporates both elements), it has a lot of obstacles it needs to face. Besides major usability issues, duplicate stories submissions, and ads that literally scream at you, Digg has yet another issue to deal with: privacy.

Ben pinged me earlier today with a very interesting observation. It turns out that your shouts are not private after all, even if you keep them absolutely hidden. Your friends can see them. Actually, anyone can see them, even if they’re not logged in.

Allow me to illustrate. My current Digg settings prohibit anyone from seeing my Digg shouts.

Digg Shout Preferences

My shouts are blocked for everyone to see, and to ensure this, I’ve saved this selection multiple times.

When I go to my profile, Digg makes a clear assertion that I want my shouts kept private. But look at that red arrow.

Digg Shout Preferences

Simply click on that arrow and get access to any shouts, even if the users turned it off. Don’t believe me? Click on this link.

Digg Shout Wall beyind Privacy Preferences

Oops!

I notice that this is only the case for some accounts (but not all). In my observations, 3 of 5 profiles showed the shout wall behind a “Sorry! XXX has decided to keep their shouts private” message. I’m sure that means that it’s a big problem for many people, which means it’s still a problem even though it doesn’t affect everyone. In the meantime, you should be wary of allowing anything personal sent to you by any individuals from being made public, such as email addresses you haven’t put on your public profile, screen names, and other identifiable information that you’d rather keep to yourself. If you must, check your shout wall on another browser where you’re not logged in. Delete whatever shouldn’t be there regularly, or just disable shouts altogether.

Hopefully Digg will start addressing the aforementioned issue in addition to the other usability issues that plague the system. It’s much more important to make the usability experience more pleasurable — but for some reason, that just doesn’t seem to be on their agenda lately. I think this is one of those issues that needs to be addressed in addition to the customer service issues before they actually sell.

Update: Jay Adelson of Digg chimed in on the Digg submission and informs us that it’s fixed. Indeed it is. I have to thank Digg for quickly addressing and resolving this problem, though I hope you still have the other concerns your users have addressed on your agenda!

[ Digg: Your Privacy is an Illusion is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2008/digg-your-privacy-is-an-illusion/feed/ 18 Pubcon 2007 Recap http://www.techipedia.com/2007/pubcon-2007/ http://www.techipedia.com/2007/pubcon-2007/#comments Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:10:04 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/2007/pubcon-2007/ [ Pubcon 2007 Recap is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Pubcon LogoThe highly anticipated Las Vegas Pubcon 2007 has come and gone, and I can tell that everyone is waiting for Pubcon ’08 from the enormous success of this conference. First, some educational takeaways:

  • Social media is the “new” medium for businesses to communicate with consumers in a way that is interesting to them.
  • Craig Newmark isn’t altruistic, but he sure created a damn good website.
  • Every conversation shifted to Twitter, as folks recognized that they can brand themselves and their businesses through a Twitter identity. On that note, if you’re so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter too.
  • Good content and copywriting will win over new readers and customers.
  • Make sure you have good pockets (or a wallet) if you are carrying cash in Sin City.

The only downside is that we were all scattered throughout every part of the strip and I don’t think I saw everyone I expected to see. But for those of you who have come to expect these kinds of conference wrap-up posts, you know the drill: it’s time to greet everyone once again. So, without further ado, here are my shout-outs in no particular order: Neil, Cameron, Frank, Laura, Jill, Chris and Danielle, Avi and Sheara, Elmer and Isaac, Ben and Eric (CHEESEBURGERS!), Brent and Annie, Michael, Rae, Lisa/Susan/Robert/Bruce, etc., Dan Rezmovits, Jane, Rebecca, Scott, Jeff, Mel, Rand, Gillian, Sarah, and Jason, Ciaran, Marcus, Markus, CK, Andy, Lee, Mike, Todd, Tamara, Andy, Matt Cutts (thanks for the shirt!), Taylor, Greg, Barbara, Dax, Cesar, Todd, Jeremy, Nate, Scott, Pat, Rob, Carolyn, Dave, Rhea, Tony, TheMadHat, Michael, Laura, Geoff, Dan, Lisa, Steve, Michael and Aaron, Michael the chiropractor, the Yahoo! clan (Kristen, Roger, Melissa, Marc, Ruth, Dave, Tim), Vanessa (where’s my email address!?!?!), Matt Stoddart, Matt Franklin, Matt Inman, Brian Clark, Jon, Abhilash, Natala, Aaron and Giovanna (who I saw for all of 3 minutes), Chris and Jihan, Nate, Dave, Vanchau and Mike, David, Stoney and Michelle, Bill Hartzer, Jeff, Christine, Bill, Li, Alan and Chris, Lacy and Karla, Arnold and Jeff (who flew with me from NY to LV), Sean (who flew from LV to NY with me), and of course, Danny Sullivan (yet even though I never saw him, if I don’t give him link love, I know he’ll call me out on the Daily Search Cast).

Of course, my trip would have been a sorry little disappointment if it weren’t for two people. Thanks to Neil and Brian for cheering me up. Best of the Web rocks! :) (I’m wearing your sweatshirt right now!)

And here are some very cool pics including the I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER clan and David Caruso of CSI: Miami.

David Caruso from CSI Miami with Laura, Tamar Weinberg, and Jill SampeyRae, Jane, Lisa, and Rebecca - Pubcon Vegas 2007
Avi Wilensky and Tamar Weinberg - Pubcon Vegas 2007Sarah, Dax, and Vanessa - Pubcon Vegas 2007
Rhea Drysdale and Tamar Weinberg - Pubcon Vegas 2007Waiting for Matt Cutts. These are not Macbooks! - Pubcon Vegas 2007
I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER!!!!!! - Pubcon Vegas 2007Dave, Nate, Tamar, Jeremy, Michael - Pubcon Vegas 2007
Jane, Lisa, Pat, Rhea, and Matt - Pubcon Vegas 2007Rebecca, Jason, Scott, Tamar, Jeff, and Mel - Pubcon Vegas 2007

Thanks much to Brett and the WebmasterWorld team (Neil, Scott, and the rest of that wonderful bunch) for putting together a great event!

[ Pubcon 2007 Recap is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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]]> http://www.techipedia.com/2007/pubcon-2007/feed/ 19 Hi, My Name is Tamar, and I am a Media Snacker http://www.techipedia.com/2007/media-snackers/ http://www.techipedia.com/2007/media-snackers/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:55:01 +0000 Tamar Weinberg http://www.techipedia.com/2007/media-snackers/ [ Hi, My Name is Tamar, and I am a Media Snacker is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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I’ve been tagged against my will by Jane and Jason in one of the latest memes: do you respect media snackers?

Well first, what the heck is a media snacker? Watch this short video to see:

Here’s the transcript for the video-phobes:

Media Snackers. What’s it all about? Well, you see the world has changed and it’s not turning back. Media snackers are young people. No longer is there a set menu of mass media delivered at specific times and to the masses. Print, radio, [and] television is now “push the red button and go interactive,” “text in your request,” or “let us tell you a story.” The internet and technology ownership has changed everything: digital TV, mobile phones, iPods, weblogs, instant messaging, [and] social networking. The media landscape has shifted from the linear to one of many layers consumed by creative and empowered individuals. Young people of the new WWW generation snuck in whenever, wherever, and on whatever they like. Crucially, their expectations have changed. Everything is multi: multi-screens, multi-channeled, multi-conversations, and multitasking. Totally connected groups are average sharers, creating as much as they can consume and using free sites to display it all. Whereas before when computers were only found in banks and offices, media snackers have access at home, in school, or in libraries — all for free. Remember visiting arcade centers to play games? Media snackers play at home and against the world. How about taping your favorite tunes off the radio? Media snackers simply download them from the web and carry their whole music collection with them. Previously, to have a mobile phone, you needed a large bank account. Media snackers just have pockets. Media snackers are young people.

The chain, sparked by Jeremiah Owyang, talks about the evolution of technology and how people need to pick and choose their media, which can be consumed easily.

Do I respect media snackers? Of course I do. I snack on media all day long. :) Whether it’s Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us, Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn, LinkedIn, blogs, blogs, more blogs, and even more blogs, you can find me looking for the most pertinent content that aligns with my interests.

Is it hard to snack on so much media at once? I would say that you need to find out what works for you. The attention economy is playing tug of war with our minds and we need to figure out what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. But before I engaged in so many social media spheres, I certainly wasn’t as well-rounded as I was prior to my participation. Now, it’s a matter of sifting through the necessary and weeding out the unnecessary. As the landscape changes, so does the content.

I respect media snackers very much and find myself having some of the most interesting discussions with them. I find them blogging about the coolest innovations or discoveries. All in all, media snacking has opened the floodgates of information, but fortunately, at the end of the day, we’re in control of what we want to read and how we’re going to digest the information.

I’m actually going to deviate from the norm and tag people for this one, since I’d love to hear from Barry, Maki, Ben, Lyndon, Andy, and Eric. My friends, do you respect media snackers?

[ Hi, My Name is Tamar, and I am a Media Snacker is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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