11 marketing tips for the new year Is “more marketing” one of your New Years resolutions? If so, USA Today provides an excellent 11-tip guide on executing against your marketing aspirations. Here are just a few: Get a tagline. Devise a short phrase conveying what you do or makes you special (like “The world on time” for FedEx). Even a simple descriptive phrase can set you apart (like “Bonded janitorial services for banks”). Full story at USA Today. More marketing tips and tricks. Photo credit: Fotolia 99 Icon Sets To Use In Commercial Design Projects Today’s blog post we have decided to do a massive collection of 99 icon sets which can each be used within commercial design projects. This compilation was put together simply because of the lack of free icon sets which are available to be used in commercial design projects, what’s the point creating an icon set if its not free to use ? A great blog post of high quality icon sets which is a greate reference to bookmark for future reference. This post was time consuming putting together therefore any comments on your thoughts about the article would defiantly be really appreciated. 1. Extreme Grunge Garments Icons This high quality, hand made, icon pack is full with 9 Extreme Grunge Social Media Garments. 2. 50 Free and Exclusive Twitter Icons The icons are provided in both raster and vector formats: The transparent PNG versions are 256×256, and we have also included Illustrator files so that you can resize the icons as needed. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 21 folders icons . 11. 12. 14. 15. 16.
HOW TO: Engage and Mobilize Facebook Fans Beyond the "Like" Last year, we encouraged businesses to move out of broadcast mode and start a two-way dialogue with their Facebook fans. As Facebook marketing has matured and more companies have had an opportunity to experiment and innovate, this approach has become de rigueur. New tactics are emerging that raise the bar for what constitutes successful engagement, particularly as brands and digital marketing agencies look to engage and activate a large number of fans. According to Daniel Stein, co-founder of digital marketing agency EVB, more of the agency's clients are now asking for programs that mobilize their millions of passionate fans on Facebook to take action in the real world. "It's important to remember that 'Likes' aren't just mechanical clicks of a button — they're people," said Stein. Here are four ways brands have mobilized fans and taken engagement to the next level. 1. In a subsequent campaign, Skittles mobilized the troops to send a student to bowling college. 2. 3. 4.
How to turn social media losses into wins So, you think you’re a social media ninja, but are you a social media judo master? And by that we mean, can you flip a social media crisis into a winning situation? Smart Blog on Social Media offers six tips that show us how. For instance, they write: Have conversations, not arguments. An angry fan is an invested fan. Full story at Smart Blog on Social Media. More social media tips and tricks. Photo credit: Fotolia
Useful Free Web UI Elements PSD Packs | chethstudios Design Magazine Everyone Likes Freebies, and when those freebies saves you a lot of time they surely become priceless and worth a mention, and we are here with a neat and useful roundup of all the web UI Elements every designer/web developer must download. Nothing more useful than saving some time which you were going to spend designing these. Need more? check out other GUI and PSD freebies. Know of any other freebies? Related Posts:Roundup of Best Free Smart Phones GUI PSD Packs80+ Free PSD Web UI Elements For Download80+ Free Editable PSD Website Templates Massive Web UI, Button Set WEB UI Treasure Chest v 1.0 Webdesigner Toolkit Free PSD: Checkbox Replacement Free Web UI Wireframe Kit Wireframe Symbols Sketching & Wireframing kit Facebook GUI free PSD resource Facebook Applications Flex Darkskin PSD UI Scalable calendar Free Web UI Element Pack Flex 3 Stencil Modern Web UI Set
Behind the Race to Build a Better Banner Ad If you're fed up with online advertising, you're not alone. A recent survey of 100 advertising agency executives found that their clients are losing patience with digital advertising. When asked why, advertisers noted that such ads don't work very well. While no one is crowing about such numbers, defenders say that figure is a bit misleading. About Those Numbers Even the staunchest defenders of banner ads concur that an average click-through rate of 0.1% is very low. Ted McConnell, executive vice president, digital, for the Advertising Research Foundation, says the difference in click-throughs for direct response ads vs. branding ads can be as high as tenfold. New Incentives Still, everyone agrees that getting web surfers to click on more ads would be a good thing. That's the premise behind Kurnit's new company, AdKeeper, which is working with McDonald's, Best Buy, Sears and Showtime, among others, on ads that consumers can save for later. Analyze This An Unsolvable Problem?
Brand and Reinvent Yourself and Business with Social Media | Smedio | The New Media and Social Web Guide for Business and Marketers Why do you exist? Why does your business exist? Have you ever thought about this? You should. Whether you’re a purveyor of food products or a purveyor of words, you present a brand. Simon Sinek, author of the book Start With Why, talks about why certain companies and people achieve greatness while others don’t. The difference between Apple’s success and Dell’s mediocrity is striking. Apple, on the other hand, starts with why. According to Sinek, both companies have access to the same pool of talented people, but Apple blows Dell out of the water in sales because people buy the why before they buy the what. So how does Sinek’s “Start With Why” approach tie into your use of social media? By now, you’ve learned the value of social media in any modern marketing campaign. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Yelp are just a few sites you can use to reinvent your brand. What is your opinion on brand and reinvent yourself and business with social media? April Gregory
Building a Social Network Site in Rails | Ruby on Rails I’m not going to cover how to actually code an entire social network site in rails as all social network sites vary in their functionality (and it’ll take too long). I will cover plugins and other things you might find useful though. Quick Start If you don’t really want to do the coding but want to get a site up and running and soon as possible, you may want to have a look at Lovd by Less by the guys over at Less Everything. Social Network Plugins Here’s a list of plugins that I’ve found to be useful while coding my own social networking site: Restful Authentication RESTful Authentication is pretty much the defacto standard for user authentication in rails. # To Installruby script/plugin source script/plugin install restful_authentication Paperclip Paperclip is a brilliant plugin by Jon Yurek over at ThoughtBot. Will_paginate Will paginate is a great plugin for allowing paging of your records. Acts_as_slugable White_list ReCAPTCHA Throttler
3 Facebook Commerce Success Stories To be honest, there aren’t a whole lot of Facebook commerce success stories — at least not yet. Facebook storefronts are still relatively new, and most people don’t view the social network as a transaction platform, especially since most third-party Facebook storefront software doesn’t actually allow transactions within Facebook. But there are still good reasons to set up shop on your Facebook Page. Doing so can allow Facebook fans to browse your products before they’ve navigated to your website, help fans spread the word about specific products and direct traffic from Facebook to product pages on your website. It’s easy to get started with applications like Storefront Social or Payvment , and there’s a chance that your existing e-commerce software offers a Facebook storefront at no extra charge. Here are three small businesses that have successfully integrated stores into their Facebook Pages. BabyAndMeGifts.com sells gifts for mothers and babies. More Business Resources from Mashable:
Become an SEO Expert for Ruby on Rails Deployment | JumpBox Virtual Appliances and Applications for Cloud Computing Ruby on Rails is a framework that allows a web developer to rapidly design web applications which are capable of leveraging database back-ends with minimal effort. Written in Ruby, Rails prefers convention and simple patterns to facilitate rapid development rather than relying on a myriad of complex and intermingling configurations files. The result is a web framework that allows you to transition from idea to implementation in a fraction of the time it might have required with other web frameworks. Introduction The JumpBox for Ruby On Rails serves as a deployment system for your Rails applications. What is the value of deploying your Rails application with a JumpBox appliance? As such, you needn't worry about the fact that your users will be hosting your application on a Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows computer. How Does it Work? Technically, it's rather simple. To learn more about deploying applications using the JumpBox for Ruby on Rails please visit our documentation site.
10 More New Ways to Make Money Online: Online Collaboration « One of our most popular posts continues to be Anne Zelenka’s classic list of “10 New Ways to Make Money Online.” The ideas and strategies she suggests there are still good ones, but they’re not the only ones available. As the Web and its opportunities continue to evolve, and web workers continue to invent new niches for themselves, there are always more new ways to make money. When you look for new revenue streams, think about what you do well. Whether you’re an expert in your field, a talented designer, a programmer, or a producer of content, there are ways to leverage your knowledge, skills and abilities, package them and provide them for a fee. Read our latest list of 10 new ways to make money online after the jump. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Photo credits: stock.xchng users kipcurry, len-k-a, nkzs and secondlife (taken by Cybergrrl Oh). What other new ways do you know of to make money online?