Three Weeks Without the Web
By Cory Treffiletti

My name is Cory Treffiletti and I am an Internet-aholic. I recently moved back to New York from San Francisco, and it's been three weeks since I had Internet access at home. At first I thought: "This'll be easy. There's a Starbucks every 35 feet in Manhattan, and I can use their Wi-Fi when I need to log on. Plus, there's always a wireless hub somewhere for me to jump onto."

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Blogs: A Better Form of Community
By Tom Hespos

What's with this notion of blog advertising being positioned as a way to "influence the influencers?" Excuse me, but 1998 called and it wants its selling proposition back.

I'm not just trying to be cute here. Lots of media plays have been positioned as a way to get to influencers over the years. Of course "influencers" is just a new-millennium spin on "early adopters," but I digress...

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RSS Ego Searches

by Sharon Housley

Ego searches are free and simple searches designed to monitor blogs and news portals for mentions of your company, product, competitors or other specific keywords. Conducting ego searches not only allows you to stay informed, but also allows you to maintain a strategic advantage over competing companies. A number of new Internet services are freely available that make these 'ego searches' painless and easy.

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Do's And Don'ts Of Emailing Press Releases

by Kevin Nunley

I'm a big believer in EMAILING press releases. Not only is email dirt cheap, email can often get you in front of editors a lot faster than regular mail or fax.

Here's why. Media outlets like radio stations, TV stations, and newspapers get a TON of press releases. During my 20 years working in radio and TV, we got bag loads of mailed press releases every day.

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Benefits of Being a Blogger

by Nicholas Dixon

I have been a blogger since September 2004 but only began to take it seriously this year. My blogging journey began when I stumbled upon a company owned by Google named Blogger.com that offered free tools to build a website.

In fact Blogger provides you with free several templates which you can customize in addition to a domain name hosted on their server. You can host your blog on your domain if you like to. Here are some benefits I found while blogging:

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Internet Marketing - Advantages & Disadvantages

by Christopher Smith

Everyone seems to be jumping on the internet marketing bandwagon lately. In the race to get their business online, many successful businesses forget to ask themselves some tough questions about what they are doing, what their expectations are and what their plan is to meet those expectations.

The internet can be a powerful tool that can put you on solid footing with bigger companies. On the other hand, the other companies may have more money to pay for advertising. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you analyze your internet marketing strategy.
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Weird Sells: Get Noticed On The Internet

by Mark Thompson

What is weird?, well in the 21st century it’s getting more and more difficult to define what is weird and what isn’t. According to the dictionary one definition is “Of a strikingly odd or unusual character; strange”. Surely that isn’t enough any more? A quick look at eBay and you will find hundreds of items that would comply with that definition. Toast with faces on it, Glass jars containing Ghosts and numerous examples of weird and wacky objects, (well weird and wacky according to the people who have submitted them.) The sheer number of them should preclude them from being classed as Weird. Mainstream Newspapers now have pages of weird news and no shortage of people willing to appear on them. The nightly news no longer finishes with heart warming local story it finishes with some weird local happening Weird is big news.

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RSS And E-mail: How They Can Work Together?

by Rok Hrastnik

For most marketers online e-mail is still the key marketing and communicational tool, with its use ranging from e-zine publishing, direct sales messages, loyalty campaigns to internal communications between team members.

But getting e-mail through due to spam filters and spam itself is getting increasingly difficult, while anti-spam legislation is putting even legitimate e-mail marketers to risk.

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Online Customer Service And Other Oxymora
By Shelly Palmer

Accurate horoscopes, airline food, pretty ugly, jumbo shrimp, vegetarian meatball, false fact, online customer service... are you detecting a pattern here?

Is there such a thing as online customer service? I assume there is, but it is becoming harder and harder to find. There is a new generation of Web-based businesses that feature incredibly low-priced ASP (application service provider) models for programming services, add-ins, e-mail, metrics, or other programming aids. Can we excuse bad customer service from low-end providers and low-profit businesses? Perhaps the free market will take care of it.

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Keep The Referrals Coming

by Jay Conners

A key method of our survival in the business and retail world is referrals. Referrals are always nice, because they come from someone on the outside of your company who has enough trust and faith in you to refer someone in your direction.

When we receive a referral from someone, it seems like an easy way to get a sale, but keep in mind, referrals don’t come without first building relationships with your current customers, and within your business community.

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Broad, Phrase, Exact, Negative - Four Google AdWords Terms You Must Know For Advertising success

by Rob Barrett

A few days ago, I was setting up my latest Google AdWords campaign. My brother was watching me work through the process, and he asked me:

'Why do you put quotation marks and square brackets around some keywords?'

I was a bit surprised to realise that I couldn't actually answer him - not in any definite way, at least. So, I set to work finding out what the matching options mean, and how they affect results.
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Make Internet Marketing Work For You Via RSS

by Paul Jesse

RSS marketing is a tool used by many on the Internet to deliver advertisements, emails, customer support responses, ezines to clients and potential clients without the concern of Spam filters hindering the receipt of the email. Spam filters have created serious problems for companies marketing through email and almost 65% of the emails you send are not even opened by the recipient. This really will hurt your business if you do not find a way to get your information to clients and potential clients. That is what RSS marketing is all about, getting your information directly to the client and potential client.

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RSS Won the Syndication Standards Battle

by S. Housley

RSS appears to have conquered the last hurtle in becoming the industry syndication standard.

Microsoft's inclusion of RSS into the newest version of InternetExplorer and reports that RSS will be in Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification. Even Atom's steadfast supporter Google, appears to have seen the light. Google had previously acquired Blogger, a popular blogging tool that uses the Atom specification to syndicate the contents of blogs created on the Blogger platform. In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold.
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Reachout Throughout-RSS

by Syed Ibrahim

RSS has been around for more than seven years but until recently “Rss Technology” started penetrating its roots deep inside the soil of the so-called E-world.

Using this standard, web publishers provide updates, such as the latest news headlines, special announcements, press releases or weblog postings through their RSS content

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Expensive Gas, Accelerated Shopping Carts
By Seana Mulcahy

We advertisers and marketers have dubbed this time of year summer's end. It seems like everyone is in that back-to-school rush, be it parents and guardians, kids, teachers, or just about anyone trying to navigate through a retail store (let alone find a parking space) this past weekend. To top it all off, gas prices have made everyone with a set of wheels aggravated.

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What You Can Publish Via RSS

by Rok Hrastnik

Contrary to popular opinion, RSS is not only good for delivering content from your blog, but has much more marketing and publishing potential.

In fact, RSS can be used to deliver a great variety of content and content types. If you can break down your content in to individual stories or individual pieces, you can deliver it via RSS.

Just to give you an impression of the power of RSS, here are some examples of content you can publish using it …
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Just An Online Minute...The New, Slow High-Speed Lines

Verizon and Yahoo! made headlines this week with their new co-branded DSL service, which will be offered at just $14.95 a month. The package appears to make broadband available at competitive -- and in some cases cheaper -- rates than dial-up access.

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An Invitation Into the Conversation
By Cory Treffiletti

Have you spoken with your consumer lately? I mean really engaged in a dialogue with them?

If you said "no" to this question, then you're probably behind the times. If you said "yes," then you're probably half-way there (the rest of the way is in my definition versus your definition of a "dialogue").

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The Powers of Nature
By Shelly Palmer

If you have not already done so, and even if you have, I urge you to visit http://www.redcross.org or call 1-800-HELP-NOW (1-800-435-7669) and donate whatever you can to the hurricane relief efforts. Also, The American Red Cross, with support of the worldwide Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, is launching a Web site and hotline to help assist family members who are seeking news about loved ones living in the path of Hurricane Katrina. Call 1-877-LOVED (1-877-568-3317) or visit the family links section of their Web site.

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Two Methods Of Marketing Using Joint Ventures

by Abe Cherian

Whether you're a contractor a local merchant with 150 employees, whichever, however or whatever, you've got to know how to keep your business alive during rough economic times. Anytime the cash flow in a business, large or small, starts to tighten up, the money management of that business has to be run as a 'tight ship.' This is where an Honest Joint Venture will help increase, not only business sales, but strong business relationships. When things go together, they're said to be complimentary. An example of two items that might go together are flowers and baskets. If you're in the market for one of these two items, you might be in the market for the other.
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The Huge Marketing Potential Of A Simple Blog

by Ian Canaway

A Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger “logs” all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains brief, chronologically arranged items of information. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.
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The Copyright Debate and RSS

by S. Housley

RSS is commonly defined as really simple syndication. So, this means that any material contained in a feed is available for syndication, right? Well no, not exactly. It means that the content contained in an RSS feed is in a format that is syndication friendly, if the copyright holder allows for syndication. Offering a feed for syndication does not in fact grant any legal rights to anyone to reuse the feeds content beyond what the Copyright laws grant as Fair Use.

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Just An Online Minute....Blog Spam

While everyone agrees that the blogosphere is growing at a phenomenal rate, it's unclear just what that rate is. Consider: The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that there are now 12.5 million blogs, compared to 6 million in April; the San Jose Mercury News wrote on Friday that there are at least 70 million blogs worldwide
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Top 7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use RSS

by Mustafa Khundmiri

In today’s online world of high-speed websites and giant portals, every established Internet business boasts of delivering content via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), a simple XML based technology allows anyone to easily share content on the web. It’s a brand new way of reaching out to your users and subscribers without the fear of getting flamed or being slammed of illegal mailing.
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Function Follows Form
By Shelly Palmer

Form follows function is the gist of the functionalist philosophy of design. The concept is that you probably can't use a computer monitor as a fork and vice versa. So, the design of something should follow its form. Uber-architect Frank Lloyd Wright turned the concept into a religion and admonished, "Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union." Look around you. Our world is replete with examples of this fundamental construct.

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Getting Targeted Traffic by Standing Out In The Crowd

by Jack Humphrey

Have you ever seen the trading floor in action on Wall Street? After the opening bell, things get chaotic. People who don't know what's going on might think of it as a riot situation. It is funny to think that the world economy is so tied to something so seemingly disorganized and inefficient. But it works, somehow, and there are winners and losers each day just like online business owners who 'win' and 'lose' targeted traffic.

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What You’re Not Doing With Your RSS Feed

by ksoft

RSS feeds have yet to hit the mainstream, but they are beginning to appear on prominent web sites including CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo, and even Google. While many sites are now publishing their own RSS feed, they fail to pursue the important step of promoting it.

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The online data related to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is pouring in from every possible direction today. Here are a few important nuggets for your consideration:

comScore Networks reports that for the average weekday in the week preceding the storm, approximately 700,000 people used the Internet in New Orleans. Not surprisingly, on Monday, August 29, that number dropped more than 80 percent below the average level. By Aug. 30, that decline had reached 90 percent.

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In yet another sign that television is merging with the Web, or at least using the Web as a conduit, TiVo says it will offer subscribers the ability to download TV shows to set-top boxes via the Web even before the shows run.

Yes, TiVo will work with the Independent Film Channel to receive a few of the channel's shows via the Web in a pilot program. TiVo subscribers participating in the test will receive the shows as early as next week.

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More Than Awareness
By Tom Hespos

Online branding has come a long way in the past decade or so. Some of us may recall the early days of online advertising when many advertisers followed Procter & Gamble's lead in proclaiming that they would pay for their ads based on how many clicks the ads received. I remember Dave Dowling at Media.com setting the precedent in the mid-1990s by putting P&G's budget behind the cost-per-click model. At the time, many of us thought that such an approach devalued the brand value of the medium and placed it firmly in the camp of direct response media.
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Blog And Ping To Build Links

by John Taylor

Just What Is Blogging and Pinging?

There is a new partnership in cyber-town called Blogging and Pinging.It is not a new comedy team or even a singing group, but a new way to build links and attract visitors to your website and to make more money. Blogging and Pinging is a marketing tool that can help anyone build their online business.

Let’s start with a definition of a blog.
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How We Really Can Measure RSS

by Rok Hrastnik

Even after all that's been written and explained, even reputable online marketing publications such as ClickZ.com still don't get RSS metrics. In an otherwise good RSS marketing article, Add RSS to Your Marketing Mix, Heidi Cohen has this to say about RSS metrics:

'From a marketing perspective, RSS's measurability is still evolvingand therefore limited. You can't tell who has received your feeds as you can with e-mail.'

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The King of Advertising
by Ari Rosenberg

CONTENT IS KING, BUT NOT for long.

Like most stories of overthrown monarchies, this too will be an inside job. This tale includes a publishing army, well-dressed evil empires, and treason committed by the King's own flesh and blood.

King Content's soldiers had odd yet powerful names like ESPN and Fox, GQ and OK, NYT and WSJ, CBS and NBC, KFOG and KROCK. These acronymic warriors were meant to serve and honor the throne by publishing an engaging product designed to please the people the King was meant to serve.

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The Buzz About Blogs

by Sandra Stammberger

The “blogosphere” is continuing to grow at an amazing pace. In fact, the number of published blogs is expected to double about every five months.

Right now, there is a new blog published every second, according to Technorati, the search engine that keeps track of Weblogs. In March there were over 7 million blogs, that number is now over 14 million.

Weblogs have become the homepages of the 21st century and are used for everything from sharing recipes, personal opinions and travel adventures, to the latest in political and economic news.
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