Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011

January 5, 2012

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!

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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010

January 5, 2011

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.

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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009

January 5, 2010

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.

This is a preview of Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009. Read the full post (10284 words, 10 images, estimated 41:08 mins reading time)
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Why the New Digg Sucks

September 20, 2007

Thumbs DownI have about 20 minutes to give my initial impressions on the new Digg profile redesign but have arrived at my conclusion: it sucks.

A few things come to mind based on everything I’ve used Digg for in the past:

  1. Digg took a step backwards in social news and took a step forward on social superfluity. Digg is now letting you send shout outs to your friends but doesn’t emphasize the initial foundation upon which the site was created: Digg is a social news site. I already turned off shouts; I use Digg for news. Not for Facebook-Myspace-Yahoo! Mash-like social networks. Merging the two when there’s already too much of it in the open is totally unnecessary.
  2. Where did the descriptions go? Now, I can’t see descriptions of the stories I’ve submitted nor can I see descriptions of stories that my friends have submitted. Since most of us use descriptions from the article text itself, it’s rather pointless to remove story descriptions because now I cannot easily discern if I’ve read the story or not before.
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Should the Subscribe Button be Above the Fold?

February 25, 2007

Ever since I began surfing on the web (it’s been well over a decade now), I’ve considered search essential. More so, on sites with a large amount of content, I find myself searching within the site for ease of locating results, especially because even before I understood what SEO was, I knew that not every page was being necessarily crawled by the search engines. Consequently, I put a lot more faith in the on-site search rather than the results spit out by search engines.

I’ve found myself time and time again searching for a term in the email subscription textbox, only to realize after I performed the search that I actually searched within the “subscribe” textbox, which is above the fold. The “search” textbox is on the site, but it’s below the fold (which takes searching for, sometimes!)

I don’t know about others, but while I understand the desire to stick the subscribe button where it’s easily found, I don’t think it does much for usability. And usability should come first. It makes me feel that the web designer forgot to keep the user in mind because the goal is an immediate conversion rather than satisfying the user’s needs.

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