February 7, 2010
The Online Life
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As a Google apps user I recently received an email from Google advising me that support for IE 6 (Internet Explorer), along with some other older browser versions (Safari and Firefox 2.0) would be dropped in March. If you are a user of Google apps, docs and sites, not to mention gmail, you will need to upgrade.
No one really should be using IE 6. Its security failings are widely known and missing features such as tabs should goad anyone to upgrading to IE7 or IE8, if they wish to continue using Internet Explorer, rather than Firefox.
In fact a recent eWeek article tied google’s recent announcement to the gmail Chinese hacker incident, where hackers that originated from China got access to gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents, apparently exploiting security holes in IE 6 to place some malware for download onto user’s computers. Google in their blog simply points out that the web is evolving at a fast rate and the newer browser versions offer a better experience.
The change will first roll out on google docs and sites on March 1st and then work its way through calendar and gmail through out 2010.
Bottom line? It’s time to upgrade.
January 9, 2010
The Online Life, Web Site Marketing Strategies
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I have been blessed with some modest athletic abilities. When I was playing a lot of volleyball, I achieved moments of pure perfection on the court. The spike I put away that rocketed past two defenders. The dig I got that ended in a roll, due to the stretch and momentum it took to get there. After that perfect dig one of my teammates said, “That was beautiful”.
These moments are so wonderful when they happen that sometimes they blind us to how to win the game. Which is … consistency and high percentages of not necessarily winners but keeping the ball in play.
Consistency is what we all need to do more with in our jobs and our businesses. Would you rather have a site that was a flash in the plan and earned a lot of money in one week or the site that is a steady if not spectacular earner for years?
Think of this in the context of PPC vs. SEO as a SEM strategy. While arguments can be made to the contrary, PPC in general is better for quick results and SEO is slower and works best with consistent efforts. Which one do you prefer?
January 6, 2010
The Online Life, Web 2.0
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It starts out by getting requests from people, at first a few, then more. You give in and build your Facebook page, or recruit the kid down the street to help you do it. Then you start looking at other people’s profiles and see people you know. Next thing you know you are connecting to people you haven’t talked to for years and it all snowballs from there.
It’s no wonder that Facebook attracted 25 million new users in the last month alone.
Facebook, a phenomenon that started with the under 35 set, is maturing in both demographics and uses. Facebook was born in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 and originally only for college students. A year later, high school students were allowed in. In 2006, Facebook got rid of its gatekeepers and began letting anyone in.
Over the next year, it grew from 12 million to 50 million users. Then it launched versions in Spanish, French and German. Today about 175 million people are on Facebook.
While most Facebook users are younger than 35, so many older people are now using it that the portion of the college-age users has dropped to 41 percent. Robert Scoble, a blogging and social media technology expert, says eventually Facebook’s popularity will slow — but not any time soon. And it remains hip with the college crowd.
“Having older people there doesn’t affect your experience,” Scoble said. “It’s segregated. You have your friends and your whole experience there is based on who your friends are.”
Of course some overlap occurs. Parents are finding that Facebook is a good way to keep in touch with their college age children who previously forgot to email or call. Of course some young people in college may be a little wary of their parents keeping tabs on them that way, however most just remove a few pictures that the parents might not appreciate.
The older crowd is here to stay on Facebook, in fact UC Davis is examining the “effectiveness of social media used by the higher education sector to communicate philanthropic news”. In other words, UC Davis thinks there might be enough people on Facebook with enough cash to help fund higher education. Since Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign, which heavily leveraged social media, it has become acceptable to run social media fundraising campaigns. Entrepreneurs are following suit and are using it to reinforce and create new business connections.
Think about the essence of a marketing campaign. You decide on your messaging and branding and with certain key activities you build momentum and buzz towards your event. This translates well to Facebook. Your Info tab .. or even better your business page, informs everyone about and even brands you and your business and your Facebook activity builds momentum towards the event you are marketing. It’s a natural fit.
Whether you plan to use the internet purely for personal reasons or you are looking for professional networking, Facebook will open doors you didn’t even know were there.
December 1, 2009
The Online Life, Web 2.0
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The Economist recently had an article noting the rise of the “faceless bosses”. Outsized personalities such as Jack Welch and Robert Nardelli are gone or retired. Carly Fiorina has turned her attention to politics.
While clearly, in today’s turbulent times, keeping your head down is attractive, I found this article an odd juxtaposition with the revolution in branding that social media is creating. Corporate branding, ho hum, personal branding is what is hot. If you haven’t figured out, you are brandU. What we say and do on twitter, facebook and our blogs becomes part of the gestalt that defines the online perception of who we are and what we have to offer.
So what does your brand say about you? Is it disorganized and not clear? Show me yours! As someone whose brand is not as together as I would like, I would love to see a a great example. Just post your URL or social media handle
below.
July 10, 2009
The Online Life
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The Story of Suzie is a fable, written for Internet Marketers and anyone else who wishes to succeed with a project, business, or endeavor of any kind.
Every morning she had cold-cuts for breakfast. When when guests came to her home, she served them only croissants and jam, because she had never heard of cooking.
One day her friend Mary called her, in great excitement. Mary told Suzie that she had just discovered a something new and wonderful, and that it was called cooking. Mary hastily explained that she had come across an advertisement on the Internet, which explained what cooking was.
After hearing a few sentences of explanation from Mary, Suzie got very excited herself. Amazing! One could actually put food into pots and pans, heat it up, do different things with it, and then one would not have to live off of croissants and cold-cuts.
But it got better. Mary went on to explain that cooking wasn’t only for experts, but that that anyone – even someone like she or Suzy, could learn to cook. And that in fact, they could do it right from the comfort of their own homes.
“Wow!” Suzy said. “How do I learn this?” Then, a little timidly, she asked, “Do I have to go to expensive night school? Because I don’t have ….”
“Oh no!” Mary said. “You don’t have to go to night school. I found a wonderful website online, and there is a very nice girl there, who will teach you how to cook. All you have to do is buy her eBook for $37.00. You can download it any time (even if it is 2 am!) and start cooking right away!”
Suzy ran to her kitchen computer and logged on. She quickly bought the eBook entitled “Cook at Home.”
The next day, Suzy was so excited, she even skipped her cold cuts. She grabbed a glass of milk (she had never heard of coffee yet, because that would have involved cooking) and opened up her eBook. She began to read it avidly.
On page 3 of the eBook, the author recommended a free software program which would help Suzie measure her flour and sugar, in case she needed to double or triple a recipe. So Suzy downloaded the software. (Of course, she had to enter her email address first, but that was okay, because it was free. Besides, they offered to send her a very helpful free newsletter!)
On page 10 of the eBook on cooking, Suzie arrived to her first recipe. It taught her how to make scrambled eggs. Suzy went to the kitchen, and got out an old frying pan that had belonged to her great-grandmother. “Ah, so that’s what this thing is for!” she said. She had butter, but no eggs. So she went to the store.
Suzy got caught in traffic and by the time she came back from the store, it was two hours later and she was very tired. She logged on to check her email. She was pleasantly surprised to see that already had the first issue of her newsletter!
The newsletter explained to her that, while most people tell you to cook with a frying pan, that’s really old-fashioned and slow. And that the best way to really cook was to get a special pan called the Super-Sonic-Fryer – which would “fry her eggs in less time than it takes a sun beam to get to the other end of the milky way”! That sounded exciting, so Suzy went to buy that Super Sonic Frying Pan.
The next day before Suzy started on her cooking exercises, she decided to search around Google a bit to see if anyone else had tried the super sonic frying pan. She got a bit distracted through, but that was okay. Because she came across something very exciting. A bread cookbook!
The advertisement explained that there are lots of things to cook, but nothing as powerful and effective as bread. And that, if she really wanted to succeed as a cook, she had to bake bread.
So Suzie of course downloaded that eBook and began to make bread.
Half-way through the recipe she realized she needed to buy yeast, so she went out and bought some.
When she returned, another newsletter had arrived. And this was exciting! It said, “Forget scrambled eggs, forget bread, that stuff is for the birds. What you really should make, is Italian pasta!!” Not only that , but if she signed up now, she would be eligible for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (which could expire at any moment). She could sign up for a free online course, and for only $29 per month, she could learn how to make all kinds of Italian Pasta – everything from tortellini, to ravioli, to spaghetti, and more.
So of course, Suzy forgot about her eggs and her bread, and she hastily purchased this new Italian Cooking eCourse. Her incomplete scrambled eggs project was no longer useful, so she threw it away. She had some bread dough rising, but while she was studying her new Italian Cooking eCourse, she forgot all about it – and it eventually fell flat and had to be thrown away as well.
A week later Suzy was depressed. She had bought all these eBooks and materials on how to Cook at Home, and had been working furiously at it, but she had yet to make a single dish!
All was not lost, however. She saw an ad for a new cookbook, which was said to be quite excellent. According to the testimonials on the sales page, many people had been trying for years to learn to cook at home, but only had success after they read that cookbook.
So, with a sigh, she bought it. Maybe this one would have the answer she was looking for.
Two months later, Suzie had accumulated an entire bookshelf full of cookbooks. Her refrigerator was full of leftovers of incomplete dishes she had begun to prepare. But she had not yet completed a single dish. Not even a piece of toast!
Suzie sat back in her big chair and let out a long, sad sigh.
“Well, she said. I guess those people who tried to warn me were right. I’ll never Cook at Home. Cooking is a scam!”
The above is a true story. But its not about Suzie, and its not about cooking.
Its about Internet Marketers like you and me.
Some people succeed at Internet Marketing, and others don’t. Why? Well, there could be many reasons.
But first and foremost – do you finish what you start?
Or do you hop and jump from one idea to the next, in search of the next great recipe?
Do you start to generate income with a certain method, only to receive an email which tells you how “that method is really slow and if you really want to make money online, now, fast, then what you should actually do is …..”
Do you have so many good ideas that you start on all of them, so that none of them can get the amount of attention they truly need, in order to succeed? Well, if you do, don’t be surprised at what you probably wind up with – a bunch of incomplete projects that haven’t yet begun to generate substantial income.
You’ve heard people say “take action,” and that’s true. You’ll never get any eggs scrambled if you sit around reading cookbooks all day, and you’ll never make any money online if all you do is read eBooks.
But there is a little more to it. Suzie took action, but she never followed through. She took on more cooking projects than she had time for, and none were completed.
As an Internet Marketer, you are most likely trying to build up streams of income. It might be a website which generates regular sales or ad revenue. Or it might be another successful campaign. So, in a sense, those projects are never really “done” (unless you drop them).
But there is a phase when you are still establishing and building up that income stream, and there is a phase when that income stream is actually creating regular revenue (which can ideally be maintained without a lot of work).
If you don’t carry your projects through past that first phase, you will wind up with a bunch of projects that are still in the “establishment” stages, but not generating substantial income.
It takes self-discipline and control to stick to a project and carry through with it until it is successful. It can be very easy to be led off in many different directions in search of greener fields.
Its a continuous pull. Call it what you like – diversion, distraction, persuasion, or “the call of the inbox …” It will always be there, perched on the side of the highway, ready to pull you off the road at any moment, like a vulture waiting for vulnerable prey to pass.
Be alert to it, and continue to push forward with your current project.
————————
Anna Williams article, “The Story of Suzie” was originally posted on Holly Mann’s Blog
Anna has written a basic and succinct post following this story, which contains some simple rules you can remember, to keep you on track and progressing. To read this post please visit If You Want a Project to Succeed at Anna’s blog.
February 23, 2009
Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, The Online Life
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You have come up with an idea for a way to make money on the net or you have decided which program you would like to promote online. You have built a terrific website that is informative and entertaining. Do you know what will be the biggest obstacle to your online success? It happens every day to millions of marketers online and no one is saying anything about how detrimental this problem can be to your marketing efforts. For more please visit internet marketing
Has this happened to you? You’ve joined a program or built a site and you know that your most important task every day is to drive traffic to that site. Even though you know that you must drive traffic to that site, that the very survival of your enterprise depends on that traffic; you waste countless hours every week opening the offers that flood your inbox every day instead of promoting your own site or program. Come on admit it. Everyone does it, but the really successful marketers are able to focus their energy like a laser on their single most important marketing task.
It’s hard to not look at all the offers that you receive every day. After all, marketers everywhere continue to use email to get their message out and some of them are very creative people. The subject lines in your inbox are screaming, “Open Me” as loud as possible. As an intelligent person you are naturally curious to find out what’s inside that message. Don’t do it! For more please visit online marketing
As enticing as those subject lines are, don’t waste your time opening them up. You have already built your site or chosen your program. You need to be promoting only that site or program. The time that you waste looking at someone else’s offer can never be recovered. Each of us only gets 24 hours per day. You need to spend as many of those 24 hours promoting your site or chosen program. Until your site ranks high enough to get natural traffic from the search engines, your primary task is to drive traffic to your site – nothing else.
One way to stay focused on your online enterprise is to protect the email addresses that are linked to your offer. Never use these addresses to join lists or subscribe to newsletters. If you do, in no time the mailboxes will be filled with offers instead of messages pertinent to your enterprise. For example, use sales@yourdomain.com, support@yourdomain.com and info@yourdomain.com for the payment, customer support and general information requirements of your site and never use them for anything else. That way you can get through your daily email chores quickly and have more time for traffic generation. For more please visit internet marketing
February 4, 2009
Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, The Online Life
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Small and medium-sized businesses alike have been capitalizing on the rapidly growing medium of internet marketing over the past few years. The dawn of the Internet presented a whole new range of opportunities for advertisers through Internet or online marketing.
Conventional advertising mediums such as TV, radio, and print have their own benefits. However, they tend to be so costly that only those with large chunks of advertising budget could make use of them. Internet marketing is relatively cheaper and guaranteed to reach the market segment advertisers are gunning for.
Online marketing entails various activities including but not limited to search engine optimization or SEO, banner ad placements, and search engine marketing or SEM. In any online marketing campaign, the advertiser or the one who wishes to market products and services must plan the strategies he will employ very carefully.
With Internet marketing, it is easy to track the success of each of your campaign strategies so it is easier to decide which ones you should pursue further and which ones you should abandon. Forms of online marketing such as pay per click (PPC), among others, could be traced and tested to find out which ads your target audience found most attractive.
One disadvantage of online marketing, perhaps, is its limiting factor for customers who are not Internet savvy or have very slow connection. Security concerns have also been raised with regards to personal information usually being asked from Internet users. There are also cases when some customers become hesitant to make online transactions for fear that their purchases might not reach them.
December 13, 2008
Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, The Online Life
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Are you interested in creating your own business? If so, you will need to find a way to market that business, otherwise to target your intended customers. Even if you have already developed your own business and it is up and running, you will still need ways to market your business to the general public. Of course, when it comes to marketing, especially online, you will need to find different ways to market your business; you are advised against relying on one market strategy or idea. That is why you are urged to search for innovative Internet Marketing ideas.
Before examining how you can go about familiarizing yourself with innovative Internet marketing ideas, it might be best to focus on exactly what they are. Internet marketing is in a way like advertisements. When marketing your business, you need to advertise to the general public what your business is and how it can help them. Internet marketing is marketing that is done online. What is nice about Internet marketing is that you don’t even have to run an online business to benefit from Internet marketing. Even if you have a storefront location, Internet marketing can still help you get the customers and clients that your business needs to survive. Innovative is another word that is used to describe new. Therefore, innovate Internet marketing ideas are new ideas.
When it comes to finding innovative marketing ideas, your best resource is the Internet. Online, you can find a large number of websites that offer free Internet marketing ideas, many of them new ideas. By using the Internet, often with a standard Internet search, you can find innovative Internet marketing ideas that are sure to make your business a success. Just a few of those ideas may include branding and demographic data. Often times, you will find that the information that you find online is provided by business owners, just like yourself, who are willing to share their successful tips with others.
In addition to using Internet Marketing, you may also be able to find innovative Internet marketing ideas in printed resources, such as books or resource guides. These printed resource guides can be found in most book stores and libraries. The only problem with using printed resources is that some of the information found in those resources may be out of date. Of course, that doesn’t meant that the information that you will find won’t be useful to you, it just means that you might not necessarily get the latest Internet marketing ideas. That is why if you are looking for the newest suggestions, tips, and ideas, you are advised to use the Internet.
Whether you use the Internet to find innovative Internet marketing ideas or a resource guide or book, you are sure to come across a fairly large number of marketing ideas, tips, and suggestions. Now, it is important to remember that those ideas aren’t right for everyone. When following an Internet marketing strategy, you are advised to keep your business in mind. For example, if you are planning on running a storefront retail store, your marketing strategies may need to be different than if you were running an online retail store.
Of course, it won’t hurt to give any innovative Internet marketing ideas you find a try, especially if they are free or low-cost, but the decision is yours to make. In addition to doing your own Internet marketing research, you may also want to think about hiring the assistance of a professional. These professionals are sometimes referred to as Internet marketing specialists.
Internet marketing specialists, for a reasonable fee, should be able to come up with innovative marketing ideas for your business, as well as execute those ideas. Whether you don’t want to market your own business or you simply don’t have the time to do so, you can benefit from seeking professional assistance.
Now that you know exactly what innovative Internet Marketing ideas are, how you can find them, and what to expect when trying them, you are urged to get started today. Finding and putting innovative Internet marketing ideas into action are the best way to give your business the edge on all of your competition.