I degraded myself as a content publisher twice last week. In both cases, after reviewing my Google Alerts and picking the day's hot news item, I wrote a blog entry that included a quote, a few inane comments about the topic and a link back to the original post.It's a technique commonly used by bloggers to drive traffic to their sites through backlinks. Indeed, some bloggers use … [Read more...]
Late for a Date
This column was supposed to be the last in our series on redesigning SostreAssoc.com, the website for my design firm Sostre & Associates. I even said in my last article that, "By the time you read this article, the new design will be live on our site and we'll have started crunching the analytics data." Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.Due to various … [Read more...]
Video + Twitter = Seesmic
I recently had to stop Twittering. It was awful. The doctors said I would go blind.Seriously folks, even for as big of an Internet geek as I am, I was completely overwhelmed by the massive flood of 140-character messages from friends and colleagues that bombarded me 24 hours a day. So at the time of this writing, I'm off the Twitter-pipe, for now.But just when I thought I was … [Read more...]
Shine a Light
It's been seven years since interactive agency Razorfish embarrassed itself on national television. When reporter Mike Wallace of CBS' "60 Minutes" asked the agency's co-founders what the company does, the answer was none too clear. Jeff Dachis, co-founder of Razorfish, said to Wallace, "We've asked our clients to recontextualize their business." Asked for … [Read more...]
Skinflint Search Marketing
I admit it - I'm a skinflint. Call me a tightwad, a miser - I don't care. Basically, I'm cheap. And even if you're not cheap by personality, you might need to conserve cash by necessity. If that's your situation, don't despair. The Internet is tailor-made for you. Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular, is the land of the free. So step up, you skinflints, and … [Read more...]
Vast Markets, But Fierce Competition
Recently, the owner of a successful local brick-and-mortar mattress store contacted me, disillusioned by Internet marketing. He expected that sales would soar once he put up his website, but it was a total flop. I asked him what was unique about his business and was told "wide selection, high quality and good prices." Then I asked him how many of his Internet … [Read more...]
Getting it Bass-ackwards
I used to tell people that if they were shopping online and using Google to search for specific products, that they should visit sites returned under the Sponsored Listings before they checked the natural search results; the rationale being that merchants who pay to advertise their products on Google AdWords will deliver more accurate results faster. Well, after a frustrating - … [Read more...]
Searching for Alternatives
It was a cold night in Pennsylvania when Leila Crooks was on Digg.com, the community-based popularity site, and came across a story about a "slanket" - a fleece blanket with sleeves that offers the freedom of arm movement so people can play video games or surf computers while snuggling under a blanket. Crooks was intrigued, bought one, loved it and sent the link to … [Read more...]
How Do You Know When It’s Right?
Being a designer is fun. I get paid to play with pictures and colors all day long. How bad can that be? That's what I and countless thousands of other high school kids thought when we chose graphic design (or "visual communications" as it said in my course book) as our major in college. As a result, nowadays everyone knows someone who designs websites. And chances … [Read more...]
Pretenders vs. Contenders
We're all looking for the next big thing in online marketing. We're marketers. We're innovators. We're hungry for new techniques, tools and tricks that we can use to produce results. It's never-ending - our quest for innovation. The biggest problem we face on this quest is figuring out the pretenders from the contenders. It seems that every day there's a new start-up that … [Read more...]
Making Over My Own Site
Being "Dr. Makeover" comes with plenty of pressure. There's an expectation that everything I touch will be inherently beautiful and optimized for peak performance. I have a dirty little secret, though: I rarely spend much time working on the design aspect of my own sites. What's that old saying about the cobbler's children? So I've decided to put some shoes on my own kids' feet … [Read more...]
Video Goes Viral
Thanks to social networking sites such as YouTube, online video has quickly become an everyday part of the online experience. While marketers have been slow to capitalize on video so far, the low cost of producing content and potential for increasing reach will make it essential to performance marketing.The audience that watches Web video skews younger, but nearly everyone … [Read more...]
Search Marketing Is Direct Marketing
When I say the word "marketing," what do you think of? Probably some kind of advertising - maybe a TV commercial for Coke. That's brand marketing, and it's gotten the lion's share of attention from marketers for decades. Far fewer people are direct marketers - the folks behind the catalogs and mail solicitations that fill our mailboxes. If you know any direct marketers, you may … [Read more...]
Passing the Test
In the May/June Affiliate's Corner column, I wrote about the ways super-affiliates prefer to be approached by affiliate program managers and merchants for the purpose of program recruitment.Wooing a super-affiliate over drinks and dinner with offers of exclusive landing pages, significantly higher-than-advertised commission rates, or showering them with free product samples … [Read more...]
The Affiliate Lifestyle
For many aspiring affiliates, the phrase Affiliate Lifestyle conjures up visions of big beautiful homes and shiny new sports cars. Graphic images on affiliate training sites encourage visitors to imagine themselves at their desk, dressed in pajamas and smiling the big happy smile as hundred-dollar bills miraculously fly from their computer monitor. Those images often include a … [Read more...]