14 Tools to Legally Spy On Your Competition Have you ever wished you were Bond? James Bond? Here are 007+007 = fourteen ways to spy on your competitors’ web sites, without breaking any FISA laws. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Your mission, should you decide to accept it: Try some (or all) of the above techniques and report back on your intriguing espionage! Shhhhh… care to share your spying secrets? 49 ways to build your brand using online marketing | SponsoredReviews Blo... Building a brand from scratch is not an easy thing to do, especially if you are in a market that is very competitive. How does one start to rise above the noise to distinguish themselves as a heavy hitter? What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below I have outlined some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques. Video Marketing: 1. 2. 3. 4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos. 5. Conversational Marketing 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Pay Per Click 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. Social Media Marketing 19. 20. 21. 22. Email Marketing 23. 24. 25. 26. Mobile Search Marketing 27. 28. 29. Search Engine Optimization 30. 31. 32. 33 Develop quality internal linking structure. 34. 35. 36. Affiliate Marketing 37. 38. 39. 40. Banner Advertising 41. 42. 43. 44. Application Marketing 45. Contextual Advertising 46. 47. On to offline Marketing 48. Be Sociable, Share! – Joe Whyte
Eye tracking study reveals 12 website tactics Eye tracking studies have revealed valuable information about how people read and interact with websites. One study, Eyetrack III, published a summary of their eye tracking results for news sites. While this is just one eye tracking study focused on a particular type of site, I think there are instructive nuggets here for any informational website. In no particular order, here are 12 results I found particularly interesting. 1.Headlines draw eyes before pictures. But the participants in this study looked at headlines, especially in the upper left of the page, before they looked at photos when they landed on a page. 2. This means you should front-load your headlines with the most interesting and provocative words. 3. The implication is the same as before. 4. No nonsense. 5. Be careful with this one. 6. The point may be that anything at the top of a page will be seen immediately. 7. In online writing as in most ad writing, you have to forget normal paragraph development. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably... Internet marketing is about lots of little things, not one big one. This list is half-list, half-procedure. If you go down these items in order it might give you a decent internet marketing plan for the next few months. If you have others, post ’em as comments: If you have a Flash introduction on your web site, delete it. If you don’t agree, try this: Shove your head into a bucket of water. 8 Harsh Truths that Will Improve Your Life They say life is what we make of it. By the end of this post, I hope to have helped you decide whether that statement is true or not. There is no doubt that life has its ups and downs. However, how we deal with them can sometimes make all the difference. Today I want to share eight harsh truths that I’ve come to learn from life. There’s also a message in each that I think we can all learn from, and when applied, will improve our lives infinitely. Some of these lessons may be old-hat for you. Friends will always come and go in your life; even though I’m back in the UK now, all my friends are in university around the country and not exactly in meeting distance. Important Lesson:There are an abundance of amazing people out there for you to meet and build relationships with. You Won’t Always Get What You Want I remember one Christmas when the only thing I had asked for was some second hand turntables for DJ’ing. Important Lesson: Not everyone is always going to like you, and that’s fine.
Mobile Ad Spending In The U.S. Expected To Grow 65 Percent In 2011 To $1.2... Spending on mobile ads is expected to reach $1.23 billion this year, according to a revised estimate from eMarketer, which represents a 65 percent increase from 2010. The estimate is slightly up from the $1.1 billion number eMarketer put out a year ago. The estimates for future years out are also up. Mobile ad spending 2010: $743 million 2011: $1.2 billion 2012: $1.8 billion 2013: $2.5 billion 2014: $3.4 billion 2015: $4.4 billion These numbers include display, search, text ads, and even video ads (which are the fastest growing mobile ad unit).
Why You Do What You Do (And Why It Should Scare You) Jun 16, 2009 When it comes to getting things done, most people think of words like productivity, willpower, and goal setting. But if you’re frustrated at where your life is right now and you’re having trouble pushing past the things that are holding you back, willpower isn’t the problem. Goal setting isn’t it, either. There’s something more important than that – something so important it determines whether taking action is a pleasure or a chore: It’s the set of personal standards you hold yourself to on a daily basis. Not willpower. Standards determine what you’ll settle for. Standards drive your behavior because they’re linked to what you will and will not tolerate in life. How messy does your car/house/office have to get before you can’t tolerate it anymore? We operate like little human thermostats – we have this mental standard of “okay” that we can tolerate, and when we dip below it, we suddenly get motivated to get our ass in gear. Don’t believe me? That, my friends, is screwed up.
7 questions every social media strategy must be able to answer It’s easy to get distracted by trivial social media arguments. Social media experts spend a lot of time hashing out old fights about the best tools and tactics for the same reasons some people can spend hours looking at new faucets or cabinet doors. The less important something is, the more fun it is to kibitz about, because the responsibility that comes with being wrong is relatively minor. The trouble is, too many people have the cabinet door conversation without ever talking about the foundation. Whom am I speaking to? That’s it. How are you answering the seven essential social media questions? What will future generations condemn us for? Once, pretty much everywhere, beating your wife and children was regarded as a father's duty, homosexuality was a hanging offense, and waterboarding was approved -- in fact, invented -- by the Catholic Church. Through the middle of the 19th century, the United States and other nations in the Americas condoned plantation slavery. Many of our grandparents were born in states where women were forbidden to vote. And well into the 20th century, lynch mobs in this country stripped, tortured, hanged and burned human beings at picnics. Looking back at such horrors, it is easy to ask: What were people thinking? Yet, the chances are that our own descendants will ask the same question, with the same incomprehension, about some of our practices today. Is there a way to guess which ones? Still, a look at the past suggests three signs that a particular practice is destined for future condemnation. First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. Our prison system
13 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Marketing In the same way that websites, then MySpace URLs, and more recently Facebook pages started appearing in TV, magazine and newspapers ads, we're starting to see more QR codes appear in traditional advertisements. QR codes have been spotted on direct mail pieces, movie posters, business cards and in Times Square. Whether they'll have the staying power of your website or of your MySpace page has yet to be determined, but while they still enjoy the buzz of the "next big thing," you can take advantage of QR codes in marketing your small business. What is a QR code? A QR code is a 2-D barcode that can be scanned by a smart phone's camera and transfer information. Based on the type of code it is, it might direct the viewer to a website, make a phone call, deliver a vCard or more. How can I market my small business with QR codes? Because of this, you need to determine if QR codes are a good fit for your business and your audience. QR Codes on business cards.
Wayne Dyer’s Top 8 Tips for Building a Better Social Life Image by kalandrakas (license). “Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. “Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.” One of my favourite personal development people is the psychologist Wayne Dyer. He seems to be a very warm person but he also someone who takes a lot personal responsibility and is assertive. This is reflected in his work. Dr. 1. “As you think so shall you be! “Loving people live in a loving world. “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” How you choose to interpret people and your relationships makes a huge difference. But your underlying frame of mind – for instance an open one or a protective and closed up one – will determine much about your interactions with new people and people you know. So you really have to go inside. But to change you have to do it. 2. But this need creates neediness.
How Brands Were Born: A Brief History of Modern Marketing - Marc de Swaan... The "Mad Men" era of the 1960s was a Cambrian explosion of brands -- from cigarettes to soap -- that have come to define modern marketing. Understanding how those marketing campaigns began helps to explain why branded products are so ubiquitous today. There was a time, going back at least 70 years, when all it took to be successful in business was to make a product of good quality. If you offered good coffee, whiskey or beer, people would come to your shop and buy it. And yet, as much as we like to complain about what we buy, it remains a fact that we live in a golden age for quality products. Please use a JavaScript-enabled device to view this slideshow The shift from simple products to brands has not been sudden or inevitable. This required an understanding of the target consumer and what we call a "branded proposition" that offered not only functional but also emotional value. But few brands are so articulate. But in the early 1990s, things started to change.