e_Marketing

I've been debating about the usefulness of Twitter. There's a good discussion on the Warrior Forum that got me thinking about this after pretty much shelving my Twitter account for a month or so.

Personally I have not found Twitter very useful, but I'm willing to blame this on my own lack of effort and patience.

Some conclusions I've drawn:

First, you really have to follow it all the time to get any use out of it.

Second, you have to develop a fairly tight group of followers who also are faithful Twitter users. If they're not interested in the same things as you are then you're probably wasting your time tweeting to them. If they're not regulars on Twitter they won't ever see your tweets.

Third, you have to give more than you expect to get. Make a contribution to your followers, help them when they need help. This is a really common bit of advice regarding social networking sites. But so many of us just ignore this advice and try to promote our products. Not good.

Fourth (the same point as No. 3) Don't promote your products or services. Be subtle.

Here's the introductory video for AgentMapIt.com our new networking site for real estate agents...

We're almost ready to go live with our new Real Estate Agent Referral Network called AgentMapIt - in fact it is live as we speak.

An Agent Referral network is a place where real estate agents can go to find agents in other cities who are interested in taking referrals. The main difference with our system is that it is Google maps based.

Real estate referrals are a win-win-win situation. Say you're an agent in Vancouver and you have a client who is moving to Toronto. Selling their house is only half of the deal. Your client needs to buy a place in Toronto and has no idea who to contact there to help them find a place.

Most agents offer their clients a "referral" service. In this case you would contact an agent in Toronto - assuming you know someone - and find out if they are interested in a referral. In return the referral agent in Toronto gives you a small part of the normal commission.

It is "win-win-win" because you (the original agent) have a happy client and get a percentage for setting them up with the Toronto agent. The Toronto agent obviously gets a new client they otherwise would not have had. And the person selling the house has someone they can trust working for them in Toronto.

AgentMapIt.com goes a big step further than the informal methods agents usually use to find referral agents in other cities. All they have to do is search for the city where they need to locate an agent. This will give them both a list and a location on the map of agents who have registered with the system.

Because it is a paid directory, as an agent you can be confident that the people registered with AgentMapIt.com are service-oriented and the more active agents in the community.

In an article called The Future of Real Estate Communication Phoenix area real estate specialist and blogger Jay Thompson suggests that agents who want to be in the loop with the next generation of home buyers had better understand the communication media they use.

Text messaging is something that has become second nature to young people as young as 9 or 10 years old, and it has basically made email obsolete as a way for teenagers to communicate with one another. Thompson reports that in December his two teenagers sent and received about 10,000 text messages - that's about 83 messages each per day - while his 17 year old son claims to have sent maybe 10 emails in the whole month.

On the other hand Thompson himself - a technology savvy parent and real estate agent - has more than 5,000 email messages in his inbox, and most of his own text messages have been back and forth with his children. So there is clearly a "generation gap" when it comes to the use of electronic messaging.

As he says, "The point is, the way we communicate is changing. According to some researchers there will be 2.3 trillion text messages sent this year. Wikipedia says that 80% of 13 – 24 year olds use text messaging (compared to 18% of 40 – 49 year olds). That’s a whole lot of texting by a whole lot of soon to be first-time home buyers."

The other change that has already taken place over the last couple of years is the way an increasing number of people use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. People who would not think of using a stuffy email message to talk to each other find themselves commenting to each other back and forth through Facebook and Twitter. Not only are these becoming mature communication channels between people, but companies and entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to interact with customers and prospects through these massively popular media.

The bottom line is that real estate agents will have to accommodate themselves to the communication media used by their clients. That means if they want to reach young people who are plugged into these non-traditional modes of communication, they themselves will have to become plugged in.

Just finished upgrading one of my many Wordpress blogs to v 2.7 - the newest upgrade which was released on Dec. 10 makes several attractive improvements to the interface. This upgrade is not so concerned with functionality as it is with improving the user interface.

I was able to upgrade my Article Marketing blog in about 15 minutes when all was said and done. There were no suprises and no hitches along the way. I'm sure subsequent upgrades on other sites will go faster.

WiMAX service will soon be available in Portland, Oregon. What is WiMAX? It is a wireless alternative to cable or DSL.

For a number of years this technology has promised to revolutionize the delivery of "last mile" service connecting homes and offices to internet access points. But these days the focus is more on mobile applications that make it a viable alternative to standard cell phone services.

The provider of this service in Portland will be Clearwire, a company formed through joint cooperation of Sprint, Clearwire, Google, Intel, Comcast, and Time Warner.

WiMAX will not be significantly cheaper than the alternatives, but it does promise to offer greater potential for merging disparate services such as internet, cell phone, Voip and cable tv.

Once you've decided to create your own blog, the first question you have to address is whether you want your blog to be hosted on your own web hosting account or be part of an already established site like wordpress.com, blogger.com, or one of the many other free blogging sites.

If you use one of the free "hosted" blogging sites (Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog.com, and many more) you can create a brand new blog in about 15 minutes. When you choose this option you become part of a larger site such as wordpress.com and your address will be something like

http://yourtownrealestate.wordpress.com

or http://yourtownmoneymanager.blogspot.com

The advantage of this approach is that it is fast and cheap. Plus you will get some traction and search engine exposure for your blog because it will be part of a much larger network that gets crawled by the search engines on a regular basis.

But in my estimation, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

Read more »

Here's an interesting idea. SmartyPig.com is like an online piggy bank with a social twist.

You create an account where you set a specific savings goal. Say you want to save for a new computer. You need $1,000. You create an account and then let your friends and family know what you're saving for. They can make contributions (or not).

You can contribute to their accounts too.

SmartyPig also has partnered with "top retailers" to offer you deals and cash incentives.

It's free and you can even earn interest on your deposits.

2008 has not been the greatest year for Microsoft, but they have still done surprisingly well in spite of the economic slowdown around the world.

In an article from PCWorld called Microsoft's Top Three 2008 Mistakes, Shane O'Neill of CIO.com discusses some of the things that went well for MS, and some that clearly did not.

In spite of aggressive marketing by Apple, Mac sales fell 1 percent over the year and Windows PC sales were up 7 percent. Microsoft's grip on the PC market remained firm - with 90% of users running Windows, and 70% of internet browsers using Internet Explorer.

One has to think that the bad press MS keeps getting will have to impact these market shares eventually. Although it sure seems like both Apple and Firefox do not understand that their elitist attitude ("we're so much better and smarter than the other 90% of you") is an implicit criticism of the very customer they are trying to reach.

2009 will be a pivotal year for MS as they continue to try to beat off Apple, Google and Mozilla (Firefox).

According to the PC Word article Microsoft's biggest mistakes for 2008 were:

1. Poor marketing of Windows Vista - They've been letting Apple get away with bashing Vista for years now. It's just not as bas as the critics say it is, and MS's own lack of promotion reinforces the idea that the critics are right.

2. Letting Apple Build Anti-Vista Momentum - Even though the sales figures may not yet show it in a convincing way, Apple has taken the marketing game away from MS with their constant Vista-bashing. MS has not shown that it can adequately respond. Expensive ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld missed the mark. Just recently I saw an ad touting the unique features of Vista in a straight-ahead way. It's about time.

3. The Failed Yahoo Bid - Early in 08 the bid for Yahoo looked like it might be a case of two search losers getting together. The failure of the bid did nothing for MS's image as a "winner" or a company forging into the future.

As it turned out it was probably good for MS that Yahoo rejected their offer. Now Yahoo is worth a fraction of what MS offered, Jerry Yang, the big Yahoo opponent of the bid is gone, and new Yahoo investors are now courting MS.

MS is still interested in Yahoo's search business, and may very well end up with it in 2009.

Squidoo seems to have a new edit and publish interface. I've always found it a bit clunky in the past, but now it seems quite a bit easier to add modules. The process makes more sense to me.

I just created a lense about Car Repair for a client.

Since I'm writing a series on "Creating A Successful Blog" I've been looking (not very diligently) for other opinions on what makes for a successful blog.

One thing I've discovered is that there is no magic answer to this question. First of all, every blog speaks to a different audience in a different tone of voice. So what one group likes another group will find boring or maybe even overtly aggravating.

I stumbled on an instance of this today when I followed a link from Lisa Barone's post called "Six Kickass Writing Resources for Bloggers".

First on her list was "What Makes a Good Blog?" by Merlin Mann.

Now I must admit there are several things in Merlin's list which I agree with, but I find the overall tone fairly aggravating. For instance, he says, "People start real blogs because they think about something a lot...They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person's obsessions take them."

Frankly I don't see why "obsession" is a necessary part of blogging. Is it because in order to do real blogging we must express our personality; and expressing our personality necessarily involves creativity; and because creativity is so relatively scarce and difficult that it will not happen without an obsessive focus on something?

Or is this just the way an obsessive person looks at it?

Of course it takes all types. But there is a certain arrogance and air of superiority about talk of obsession and creativity that I can do without.

How will Twitter pay for the service they provide? As a social network like Twitter becomes larger, users become more demanding, and resources required become more expensive the question of "monetization" becomes paramount.

There is an interesting discussion about this here:
"Twitter has made Dell $1 million in revenue".

It is one thing for companies like Dell to take advantage of the communication features of Twitter, and another thing for Twitter itself to capitalize on those successes.

The monetization model that Twitter eventually adopts is very important for its survival. It is hard to see how it will not include advertising in one form or another.

I suspect that like Facebook they will soon start rolling out ways of searching for and segmenting the Twitter user base so that advertisers can target specific segments.

If other social networks like Facebook and Youtube are any example, this will also involve things like groups, channels, networks, etc. where users group themselves into demographic slices. Then there will be several ways for advertisers to target specific users.

After using Google Docs now for about two months for collaboration on group projects I'm not sure what we used to do without it.

I still haven't looked at any document types other than the word processor, but if that's all there was I'd be quite happy with it.

Here's my previous post where I mention "Three Reasons to Like Google Docs". I'm happy to say that unlike many things that get tried and soon forgotten about, this one has real staying power.

Coming up with interesting stuff to write about is one of the ongoing challenges for bloggers. A blog is only useful if it is regularly updated, and is targeted to the group of readers you're most interested in.

Stumbleupon (SU) can help. Anybody who has used Stumbleupon knows it can generate gobs of traffic in big bursts. You do a Stumpleupon review of a page and that page is then likely to give you a terrific spike of traffic for at least a day. After that, not much.

But I'm not really talking about the traffic building potential of Stumbleupon. I'm talking about its ability to show you interesting websites in your area of interest. Those websites can in turn provide lots of fodder for blog posts.

As you may know when you use Stumbleupon you establish a pattern of viewing and reviewing, and then you are presented with pages about those things as you "stumble" along. You click the "Stumble" button (you need the Stumbleupon tool bar to do it properly), and you're presented with web pages in your areas of interest.

For instance, one of my areas of interest is guitar playing. There are some fantastic guitar playing websites out there and most of the ones I've found have been through SU.

Another interest I have is philosophy. And believe it or not, there are actually some very interesting philosophy websites out there. I don't think I would have taken the time to find or look at any of them if it weren't for SU.

To get back to my point... If you're a blogger, enter your preferences into Stumbleupon, and then Stumble on a regular basis. You won't have a shortage of on-topic things to write about every again.

Twitter users who want to connect with other local users may find TwellowHood useful.

This new search capability from WebProNews is built into its Twellow service.

They call it a "yellow-pages service for finding people on Twitter. You can search for things or browse the directory to find people who tweet about the topics you are interested in."

It is map-based. You mouse over a location on a US map and it will tell you how many people they have positively identified as being twitter users in that state.

The user numbers are not real impressive yet, and the data is only available for the US so far, but you can see how this has the potential to make Twitter use even more marketing-friendly. Now marketers or businesses will be encouraged to "optimize" their posts and profiles so they come up in the right category.

Check it out at Twellow.com

Commenting on blog posts as a tactic for self-promotion is something I've written about from time to time. Some self-proclaimed blogging, social networking, link building, and SEO experts think this is a good way to gain search engine exposure, links, and reputation.

I doubt it very much. Your comment will stand out on a blog with little traffic, but will be buried in the pile of 75 other comments on a blog with a lot of traffic. So either way the returns are limited.

You will get much better results from posting on relevant forums where you can make a direct contribution to a thread that people are actually reading. I've proven this to myself quite a few times.

The tactic of commenting on blog posts for links naturally gives rise to comment spamming too.

Yes, I know there are programs that search out relevant blog posts and then help you fashion a "relevant" comment. Usually the people who create these programs say "I am not recommending comment spamming. I am recommending that you find interesting posts and create real comments."

Right. Sure.

For another take on comment spamming see this post - Spam by any other name...

This cool poll and survey app can be up and running on your site in about 1 minute. It's from PollDaddy.com.

Create an account at polldaddy, then just type in your questions and possible answers. Save and copy html into your web page or blog. I've put today's poll into the sidebar.

No need to enter your email address or anything like that.

You have your choice of 19 stock layouts, or you can create a custom style. Pretty cool.

I just couldn't resist this blast from the past...

I just did a search for "marketing with Facebook" and up comes Inside Facebook. This site is jam packed with all the most current information about using Facebook to establish a brand, while reaching out to a broad community of colleagues and prospects.

The "Facebook Marketing Bible" is a must read for anyone wanting to use Facebook for marketing purposes. Really incredible information!

Is anybody asking what all this "stimulation" is doing to our economies? Here's what happend in Zimbabwe..

Go here for some more amazing photos.

Or maybe this is what happens if you don't stimulate.

I'm sure the economists know.

Does anybody else find Classmates really really lame? Every couple of days I get an "update" that somebody has visited my profile. I guess it happens so rarely that it is an "event" when someone actually looks at your profile.

Invariably it is just someone searching around seeing if there is any real information to be found. And of course there isn't because almost nobody (at least in my circle of acquaintances) bothers uploading up to date information.

Facebook is a much more useful app for connecting with people. I can't see how Classmates has any kind of future.

Which is better for making web videos: Mac or PC? Lots of people think Mac is the way to go. Others (like me) wouldn't give up their PCs for love or money.

In this video called Mac or PC, Mike Koenigs an online video guru takes a look at both systems and gives his take on which is the best for producing web videos. He also talks about video production software and makes recommendations.

If you’re wondering what system and software to get, check out this video now:

In this video called Mac or PC - which is better for web video?

"The Rapid List Profit Formula" by Chris Rempel is the best list building advice I have ever seen.

Have a look right here - The Rapid List Profit Forumula

In this 41 page report Chris offers actionable advice on how to build a powerful list as quickly as possible. These are not the same old tired ideas you may have seen before.

This is not about building a list of tire-kickers or freebie-seekers by joining giveaways (for example).

It is about techniques for leveraging the contacts of other successful marketers, getting them to happily promote your products, and much more.

Like I said, this is the best list-building advice I've ever seen, and you know I don't promote stuff unless I am completely confident that it works.

Check it out - The Rapid List Profit Forumula

A while back I discovered this way to get free PPC ads. Surprise, Surprise! It actually pulls some significant traffic.

Check it out. It's called LeadsLeap

I am very skeptical about traffic sharing systems, traffic exchanges, etc. But this one is diffeent. This system sends selected messages to members only. Members are motivated marketers, so if you have something to sell, these people are probably interested in it.

There is no need to mindlessly view sites or click on links just so others will look at yours. And you will not be bombarded with hundreds of emails.

This system is targeted to the internet marketing niche. So if you have an internet marketing product it's a good fit.

Check out this newly launched service and get in FAST before anyone else! You will regret if you don't.

Have a look. You'll be surprised at how on-the-level this thing is. It's called LeadsLeap

Just stumbled onto pageflakes.com - a portal site that lets you define a home page that includes relevant news, videos, weather, feeds, your twitter feed, your Facebook feed, and a lot more.

I like it much better than any other similar one I've seen, although I must admit, I've never looked very hard at these things.

http://www.pageflakes.com

I don't suppose too many are interested in this, but here's a tutorial describing how to set up your own free dedicated web server.

All you need is a decent computer - an older one is OK - and several hours to spend getting it to work. I guess a fast internet connection and a dedicated ip address would be good too.

Setting Up a Free Dedicated Web Server

Somalia isn't the only place where pirates roam free. Amazon.com is now being targeted by the Firefox browser add-on called "Pirates of the Amazon".

The add-on integrates links to "free" pirated copies of digital titles found at The Pirate Bay. That includes CDs, DVDs, games, books - any digital product.

Amazon.com is the world's largest online retailer. The Pirates of the Amazon self-righteously proclaim their motive is not to take advantage of lapse pirating enforcement. Instead they want to be "a counterpart to the current models of media distribution" in order to "redistribute the wealth".

Yea, right.

Read more

Here's a good article about building your Twitter community. How to search for people to follow, proper etiquette, Twitter lingo and more.

How to Build your Twitter Community

If you use Twitter you've probably noticed that some tweeters are posting tweets every couple of minutes. This has to be either an addiction, not having enough to do, or a deliberate strategy to hog the limelight.

When you tweet that often you're constantly in the face of anyone who is following you. Right now on my home page there are 20+ entries and all but thre of them are by the same person.

Is that a good reason to stop following that person?

This article suggests that article marketing is not a good SEO tactic - "5 Reasons Why Article..."

I happen to not agree, and many commenters also share my position, but it is worth having a look since so many claim article marketing is so powerful. This presents a contrary view.