Social Media

Let’s face it. 2009 is a year that many of us are pleased to put behind us. We want to look to the future. 2010 beckons. New mobile phones and tablet computers are appearing every week. We are seeing crazy-fast take-up of social media like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Add those developments to a rebounding economy and it all indicates an infl ection point: one of those moments in history when everything comes together to enable massive change and opportunity.

After a rough start, the biggest social network is setting the standard in the newest area of performance marketing.

While most publishers are scrambling to find their place in social media, Facebook is quickly perfecting performance marketing techniques that have the potential of reshaping online advertising on a scale unseen since the rise of search engine optimization. Its recent hookups with some of the world’s biggest brands offer a glimpse of the future, and it isn’t a pretty sight for affiliates.

Many of the smartest marketers I have had the pleasure of knowing, agree that building an email list is essential to long-term success.

Profiling is a term I use to partition my list into separate sub-lists that can help you identify what products or services are of the greatest interest to your list subscribers. A profile can be any way you want to separate the list members into groups of like interests, wants, needs, demographics or any other predictor of future buying behavior.

If you're in any way involved in marketing - online or off-line - chances are that you've read at least one of marketing guru Seth Godin's best-selling books. He is the author of 10 books, including "Meatball Sundae," "All Marketers Are Liars," "Purple Cow," "Permission Marketing" and "small is the new big." Armed with a degree in philosophy and computer science from Tufts University, he began his career as brand manager for Spinnaker Software in Cambridge, Mass. Godin is also founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, an interactive direct marketing company, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998.

Has this ever happened to you?

It's late evening and your weekly newsletter, which would normally be queued for delivery on your autoresponder and blog by this time, is still nothing more than the vast white expanse of a blank Word document. Not only haven't you written a word, you also don't have the first clue what to write about, or which product you should try to sell.

Although you are usually passionate about your topic - organic vegetable gardening - you begin to wonder what the heck you were thinking when you chose to build a site around a seasonal niche.