It is no secret that Google has become a dominant influence in the way the Web is accessed and used. The word “Google” itself has become a verb, and people will often begin their web sessions with Google, even if they know the exact URL of the site they want to access. From E-mail to search to maps to shopping, Google dominates the Web experience of millions of Internet users. Google, however, is not just a passive player. The search engine giant extends its influence over every aspect of the Internet it touches and has aspirations to reshape the whole Web in its image. The purpose here is not to determine whether those goals are good or bad, but to highlight the many ways in which Google has already changed the web and what might be on the horizon over the next few years. Searching for Anything and Everything Google’s bread-and-butter is still search, and they have systematically nurtured their – Read the full article
There’s a high-potential marketing platform that’s slowly and surely attracting corporations, small business owners, advertisers, and marketers alike. Observers say that this is a big one – an avenue through which one can reach a good portion of billions of consumers. It’s called SMS. You know: text messaging. No, you’re not reading an article from our 1998 archives. This is 2010 all right, but you know what? In the age of tablet computers, flashy apps, smartphones, and social media, SMS marketing has indeed become one of the most viable and important platforms for businesses today. Here are some numbers: An estimated 3.5 billion text messages are sent and received every day. 57 percent of all cell phone subscribers use SMS on a regular basis. According to the New York Times, 97 percent of text messages are opened, and 83 percent of these are opened in less than an hour. Despite the explosive growth of smartphones and mobile technologies like the – Read the full article
It used to be that businesses concentrated their marketing efforts exclusively on traditional (offline) media – like print ads, TV commercials, radio, PR campaigns, events, billboards, direct mail, glossy brochures. And then the Internet happened. And then social media changed the Internet. A recent report by GrowBiz Media, a small business market research firm, and online survey company Zoomerang led to key insights on how much money small businesses are allocating for their Internet marketing efforts. Entitled “SMB Marketing Practices: Small to Midsized Business Survey Results, 2010”, the report gathers information from 751 completed surveys across the U.S., by businesses with less than 1,000 employees. Among the key takeaways: More than half of the businesses with less than $1000 marketing budget are adopting social media practices, most notably in social networks Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (in that order). Around 39 percent of respondents are spending more than 20 percent of their marketing budgets on websites (design, development, content creation, marketing, – Read the full article
Ever heard of NaNoWriMo? If you’re an aspiring novelist, it’s a safe bet that you have. The acronym stands for “National Novel Writing Month”, which is marked every November as a creative writing project encouraging participants to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month. If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, but you have plans someday of self-publishing your own book – be it a novel, short story collection, poetry, memoir, corporate souvenir, e-book, children’s book, cookbook, picture book, guide or how-to book, vampire anthology, etc. – then you might want to read on. Of course, you can always work on finding an agent and attempt to have your manuscript edited, printed, distributed, and marketed by traditional publishers. But that takes a lot of guts – and, possibly, money. (Besides, one can only take so much rejection letters.) So in case you choose to do-it-yourself, or have no choice but to do-it-yourself, below is a list of the top five – Read the full article
Facebook, the world’s largest networking site with over 500 million members, launched a new messaging system Monday, taking various communication platforms like E-mail, SMS, instant messaging, and chat and integrating them into what is called Facebook Messages. The system is a result of a 15-month engineering project, considered by many as the largest Facebook has undertaken. Facebook Messages is actually a revitalization of its current messaging system, and – despite industry observers and news media hyping the new feature as an “E-mail killer”, intended to rival Google’s highly popular Gmail – it isn’t technically a new E-mail platform. “This is not an E-mail killer,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We don’t expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say they are going to shut down their current E-mail accounts.” What Facebook Messages does provide are three unique communication features, which served as the highlights of Zuckerberg’s Monday announcement. Seamless messaging: Facebook users will be able to send and – Read the full article
Not long ago we published a blog post with essential tips on how to use LinkedIn for your small business. Since then, Facebook and Twitter continued to rise and flourish under the social media spotlight. But it doesn’t mean that LinkedIn had not gone through its own evolution, because it did. Just check out the stream of activity on the official LinkedIn blog. Or take numbers as proof: today, 80 million professionals – and counting – have signed up to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities through the social networking site. After all these new LinkedIn features and developments, we thought it would be a great time for an update. Here’s a list of tips on LinkedIn for small business – tips that may not have occurred to you just yet, but which will certainly give your online presence a huge boost. Upload that picture. Okay, we did mention this in that previous article – “brand your profile” – but judging – Read the full article
A number of the world’s biggest businesses and brands are using Twitter. Chances are, they’re also using Facebook. And their employees are using LinkedIn, to connect with other professionals. How do you, as a small business owner, set yourself apart from the competition? Obviously you’ll have to be more creative with leveraging social media, and with finding alternative platforms where you can engage with customers. You’ll have to seize overlooked opportunities for marketing, or create these opportunities where none exist. Start by knowing there are other social networking tools in town. Like Flickr, for example. Okay, so we can almost hear you say it. Flickr? Really? How do you use that for marketing? Um, isn’t Flickr a picture community for hobbyists and photographers and artists? Just like Vimeo is a video community? And doesn’t Flickr explicitly say that you can’t use the site for commercial purposes? All of the questions above have a point, but that doesn’t mean you can’t – Read the full article
So you’ve heard the stories of how affiliate marketers made thousands – millions! – from the basements of their homes. Yes, thank you, Internet. If you haven’t come across any such success story, suffice it to say that they’re all pretty inspiring stuff: stuff that you, as an affiliate marketer, will want to carry with you as evidence that there’s no better, more effective, more independent way of making money on the Web. Indeed, affiliate marketing is an amazing opportunity. There are loads of easy-to-join programs, endless lines of hot, trendy products to sell, great resources and tools to use, and desirable amounts of commission to earn. There are just as many horror stories, though. In the mad rush to leverage the power of the Internet and sell products via the affiliate marketing platform, many have lost more than they gained. Many did not become millionaires. Many quit. Many just took their talents to South Beach, or to the local – Read the full article
