Worth a Look: Sprout

Check this out! It's a new site I have been monitoring for the past few months allowing you to create multimedia web pages to promote events, yourself or your favorite charity. The sample pages look very swanky and this mashup is sure to be hot of the heels of MySpace and Facebook. Sprout.

Give Your Customers The Loudspeaker

A survey from Guidance and Synovate mentioned on MarketingCharts.com shows that more than 60% of respondents report being drawn to online retailers that employ Web 2.0 tools and techniques.

Customers like to see recommendations and give their opinion and they appreciate being part of a community. Build your site for your customer, welcoming your customer and with the ability to listen to them and allow them to voice their opinion. The statistics say you'll build customer loyalty, and who knows you might feel pretty good about it as well.



Of course Amazon does this well. Note the "Welcome Susan Barnes. We have recommendations for you." at the top of the Amazon screen. They remember me and are adding value by showing me recommendations. That means that Amazon is thinking about me. Are you thinking about your customer or your business?

Internet Marketing Presentations

Invent a business from name to launch. Present this business and your Internet marketing strategy for launching and promoting this business.

1. Target Audience
2. Domain name
3. Website (Features)
4. SEO and Analytics
5. Build brand, network, community
   
6. Blog
7. Incentives/Promotion
8. Ongoing – Stay current
   • with new trends
   • determine what is relevant

Email Marketing Statistics and Metrics

http://www.emaillabs.com/tools/email-marketing-statistics.html

Email Marketing

Top HTML Email Coding Mistakes

Advertising in Virtual Communities

Toyota Scion in Whyville - kids are learning about engineering cars, paying mortgages and saving money at the age of 12 - all through a virtual world. Will these kids be able to pay for their first cars with Linden dollars?

Information R/evolution

Another great Digital Ethnography movie from Michael Wesch.

2014

Watch it all the way to the end and then tell us what you think. Are we headed in the right direction?

Podcasts

There *is* such a thing as a FREE lunch!

If you have an iPod, or MP3 player and you have'nt yet experimented with podcasts, I encourage you start TODAY! There is a wealth of information on all kinds of topics out there and a most of it is free. I have found a few gems during my 2 year love affair with the medium.

Recent regulars to my commute time are:

• Internet Marketing Voodoo - an interview style format with expert marketers providing tons of super useful information about current trends in Internet Marketing. Check out their web site at http://www.internetmarketingvoodoo.com as well.
• The Daily Search Cast - http://dailysearchcast.com/ - a WebmasterRadio.fm sponsored cast with Danny Sullivan chatting with a few different industry professionals in a very informal conversational style. Danny is excellent. If you want to know what's happening in the world of search and social media, subscribe to this one. (If you do listen to it, you will notice that this cast contains advertising, which means that Danny and co are being paid by advertisers to keep the cast going. This is just one example of how to make some money through podcasting.)
• LSAT Logic in Everyday Life - from Princeton Review - a nice sojourn into the world of logic as it applies to the LSAT.
• Manager-Tools by Mark Horstman and Michael Auzenne. This is not a marketing podcast, but one that any manager in any field can gain vast amounts of knowledge from. These guys are amazing! Check out their web site at http://www.manager-tools.com.
• IT Conversations - http://www.itconversations.com/index.html
  
  Why mention podcasts? Because there *IS* such a thing as a free lunch.
  Give things away and people will love you for it. For example, Mike and Mark of the Manager-Tools podcast, have been providing excellent advice on best practices in the management industry for about 18 months - all for free via their weekly podcasts. They have built up a huge following and are now rated 9th overall on Podcast Alley and 1st in the business category.
  
  A lot of companies, particularly in the Information Technology and Marketing industries are giving away free content with podcasts in order to build brand awareness and inform potential customers of their services.
  
  I think this is going to be HUGE, HUMONGOUS I tell you, but sssshhh most casts are still 100% off. That's not too shabby is it?
  

The Marketer's Podcast has entertained me in the past. It hasn't been updated in a while, and that is a shame because I really enjoyed the interview with Andre Mazzarano of http://www.gringo.nu on Interactive Branding. Check out that site - it is an interesting concept, especially after hearing the interview.

Also be sure to listen to "Are you freezing or thawing" and "What is really important?" on the Marketer's PodCast page. They are only 3 or 4 minutes each and well worth the listen.

Enter "marketing podcasts" into the iTunes Store's search box and you'll find plenty of different podcasts on marketing to choose from.

Notice the Starbucks and Nike brands collaborating with Apple all of a sudden? Interesting isn't it?

If you are comfortable with the sound of your own voice when recorded and you have something of value to offer your community or target audience, start a podcast. It can be a very effective way of increasing your visibility, because people are really starting to get turned on and TUNED IN to them. Podcasts are like Audio Blogs and you subscribe to them just like you can subscribe to a blog.

How to create your own podcast:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/ - look at the bottom of this page for creating audio and video podcast on Mac or Windows.

Also, see Podcasting made easy: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ipod_itunes/podcastmaker.html

And...
http://www.hipcast.com/

To Blog or To Twitter

For any of you wondering whether you should be posting to your blog or twittering, Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips recently wrote a great argument for blogging.