Google Panda Has Killed Low-Level Affiliates

Many affiliate marketers whine that Google Panda has destroyed the Internet and ruined the affiliate marketing industry. This isn’t true. However, those sites that peddled low-level content have watched their earnings dwindle in recent months.

Art by likwtf123

However, Google Panda can actually help make your affiliate site more profitable. If you think about it, every low-level website that got knocked from the front page was replaced by a higher quality site. If you maintain a high quality site, you can thrive as an affiliate.

If you are going to write a post, you want it to sound professional and authoritative. Google Panda is slapping any sites that just regurgitate content without offering anything of value. The founders of sites like Suite101 were shocked when their search engine traffic dissipated. I had some old Suite101 articles published that lost almost all of their traffic after Panda. As discouraging as this was, it came as no surprise. The content farms are filled with articles that are typically written by people who clearly have no understanding of the subject they write on. If you want your site to be different, then you need to make sure that you are going to be able to speak intelligently on the topic.

You are also going to need to go out of your way to make your content more engaging and interesting to your readers. Google is relying heavily on social networking sites to understand what the Web community thinks of the content. If you get a lot of tweets and shares, then Google will believe you have trusted, valuable content and will rank you higher in the search engines. Therefore, you want to make sure your site is optimized for social media as well as your target keywords.

Laws Associated with Affiliate Marketing

There are a number of laws which have changed the way affiliate marketing is being run around the world. Many government jurisdictions have started cracking down on unethical affiliate marketing practices, which may seriously compromise the way that affiliate marketing is going to be done.

These laws tend to be more concerning for marketers in the United States and Europe. The United States Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on how entrepreneurs can promote products. For example, they now require that websites provide disclosures when they are promoting affiliate products. Also, they are being much more proactive in ending fraud around the country. A number of affiliate marketers have been charged for promoting a series of health products using unfair marketing tactics. In these cases, they pretended to be unbiased journalists analyzing the product but they were clearly going out of their way to promote the products.

If you live in the United States, you need to formally understand all laws covered by the FTC. Most importantly, make sure you understand the need to provide disclosures and be honest with your customers. That’s not to say that you need to emphasize the flaws of the product. You are still a marketer and want to place your products in the best possible light. However, deceptive tactics that were not taken seriously five years ago could get you in a lot of trouble.

Even if you don’t live in the United States, you may still feel the sting, particularly if you are using hosting in the United States. Also, many entrepreneurs outside the United States have been charged by the FTC for violating laws. I am not an attorney and cannot advise you when or how these cases emerge. However, it may be a good idea to know what these laws are and how they will affect you. The United States works closely with other competition agencies overseas such as the Competition Commission in the UK. Although smaller affiliates may not be affected by the laws, larger affiliate may really feel the sting.

The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) is one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to ever reach the desk of the U.S. Congress. If this law is signed, then it will create major problems for affiliates all over the world. Affiliates who tried resorting to tactics such as content scraping and using article spinners can watch their websites get taken completely off of the Internet. Although I never condoned those practices to begin with, I must seriously emphasize how important it is to refrain from using them.

European affiliate marketers have a number of different challenges to face as well. The EU Cookie Law is one of the biggest changes to affiliate marketers and took place in May of this year. This law states that websites must gain consent in order to use cookies on their websites. Violating this law in the UK can result in a fine of 500,000 pounds. This is one of the biggest challenges to affiliate marketers and many speculated that it would be the death of affiliate marketing entirely.

However, there are still plenty of ways that affiliate marketers can thrive in the UK. If you are an affiliate marketer, you have two options. First of all, there are different technologies that can allow you to track cookies. One alternative is to use hidden form variables to track your sales. Secondly, you can consider asking your users for permission to enable cookies on your website. As long as you have their permission, then you are in compliance with the EU Cookies Law.

Although some of these laws are necessary for our protections, others may be a little excessive. Regardless, you want to make sure that you understand the policies before you get seriously involved in your affiliate marketing company.

The Road Ahead

The landscape of affiliate marketing has changed dramatically. Before you get too integrated into your affiliate marketing strategy, you need to consider the new challenges that you are going to face. Make sure you address the problems that you are going to be dealing with before you watch your affiliate business fall apart.

The biggest thing to do is follow laws developing throughout the world. Many jurisdictions are cracking down on affiliate marketers they feel are not operating ethically or responsibly. Search engines are also trying to purge the world of spam. As an affiliate, the rules have changed substantially. You are going to find that you are going to have to work very hard to develop quality content and never give even the slightest appearance of impropriety.

1. 60 seconds on the web

This one shows what happened on the web during 2011 in a timeframe of 60 seconds, if we minimize the whole year to it. 600 new YouTube videos, almost 700,000 search queries on Google and Facebook status updates and close to 100,000 tweets should say enough about what power the internet holds nowadays.

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2. Disruptive Companies

It is easy to see how Apple, for example, disrupts today’s web. The iPhone and iPad start to replace the computers and old phones and always bring new ideas to the table.

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3. Instagram’s Fun Facts

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4. User Generated Content

Nowadays people say “Content is King” and after reading this infographic you will see why they mean it. There is so much content on the internet that is really difficult to keep up with, therefore we have to sort out the things we are interested in and only follow those.

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5. App Store Info

Want to see some interesting information about the apps in Apple’s Store? Then this infographic is for you.

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6. Foursquare Reaching 10 Million Users

This is an animated .gif and you might want to see it in full.

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7. Spam

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8. How Busy are Americans

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9. Facebook Relationships

This infographic is not only about Facebook users, but also about their relationships. Very good to understand how Facebook works for us and how we interact with the others.

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10. Bugs in your Open Source Code

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11. Twitter History

If you tweet a lot, you probably already know some of these, but otherwise this is an interesting read about the records on Twitter and some other statistics. It is not only for 2011, but includes some events from last year.

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12. Farewell to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the former genius and Apple co-founder, died in the latter part of 2011. This infographic is more or less dedicated to him and tells us the important milestones in his life.

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13. iCloud

Apple’s new technology is shown and explained in this infographic.

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14. iPhone Users and their Security Concerns

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15. Online Hiring through oDesk in the Bay Area

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16. Future Social CEO

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17. Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line

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18. How does Google make a Profit

If you still ask yourself where does Google, a free service, make its money from, then this infographic will definitely provide an answer to you.

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19. The Life of a Facebook Photo

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20. Differences Between Mac and PC Users

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21. The Apple Products Tree Since its Foundation

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22. Online and Offline Marketing

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23. Social Media Marketing and its Effectiveness

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24. The StartUp ToolKit for Online Entrepreneurs

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25. A Day in the Life of a CEO

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Most websites commit at least one of the top crimes listed below. Do you agree with the choices?

1. Graphic Clutter

It’s obvious this website’s purpose was show as much information to visitors as possible above the fold. While this is a valiant effort, too many graphics can work against you.

A great call to action page will send your eye to a specific area. When you look at this page, your eyes are drawn everywhere and if you were looking for a car, you wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Though this page is not a landing page, it is a prime example of why less is more when trying to increase conversions with web page design. A call to action page should include benefits, features, logos, maybe one or two images and a prominent call to action button. Any more and the page will suffer.

A website home page should follow suit while including clear navigation and an easy experience for visitors. Avoid clutter at all costs. White space is your friend!

2. Blended Call to Action

Though the call to action button on this page is outlined in yellow, it does not stand out enough from the background. The yellow also matches the font above it so it blends into the background even more. The color scheme of the page is yellow, red and orange and the call to action button follows the same color scheme; therefore, it does not stand out enough. A solid color in contrast to the page would work best.

3. Distracting Background

Many businesses want to incorporate their brand colors into their website design. While this is a smart marketing strategy, if the color is overdone or distracting, it can have an adverse effect. The bright yellow background in this web page is very distracting and it draws the eye away from the purpose of the website. If you view this website in its normal size, you will see how truly distracting the bright yellow background is.

It’s good to implement your brand colors in your website design, but not at the expense of distracting visitors away from your purpose. Your background should support your web page and be somewhat neutral.

4. Lost call to action

On this page, the call to action button is not only lost, it is nonexistent. One of this website’s desired actions is to urge users to click and find out more information about the Thank You® Premier card. The current call to action is simply text that says “Get Moving”.

If you really want to lead users to an intended action, use buttons in contrasting colors. Text will never be strong enough to get users’ attention. The button should include a contrasted color that screams “click me” without slamming it in user’s faces.

Also consider the call to action button’s proximity to other elements. For example, with an ecommerce site, the “Add to cart” button would be most effective if it were placed right next to the product. You can also place call to action buttons near places of interest like testimonials, feature lists and benefits, etc. Make sure, though, not to clutter your page with too many buttons. Keep them close to your key points and at a  maximum of 2-3 per page for simple landing pages.

5. Too Much Information

When people offer us more information than we want to hear we often say it is TMI or Too Much Information. Similar to how you would want that person to be quiet, a web page will suffer this same reproach if it is suffering from TMI.

On this example web page, the call to action is not front and center and your eye is drawn to the articles instead of the “Get a Quote” text. This page, while meant to attract visitors to get a quote, leads them towards reading an article which may be too much information for this page. Content is not necessarily bad; great content outlines the pages of some of the greatest websites. But when it blurs the message of the site or distracts users from a clear call to action, profits will suffer.

For this website, a more prominent call to action in a more effective location would draw the eye there first.

The goal with a call to action page is to lead your visitors to click on the call to action button without distracting or boring them with too much information. You should include enough information (features, benefits, guarantees, testimonies) to lead them to take action without overdoing it. If your visitors cannot figure out whether or not your site will be beneficial to them in the first few seconds, they will assume the worst and hightail out of there.

6. Too many Links

This page is actually ranking quite well for competitive mortgage related keywords, but the design of the site unfortunately does not follow suit.

Unless your site is product specific (e-commerce) or purely informational, excessive text links can overwhelm users.

The purpose of this website is to guide consumers to get a mortgage quote. While classifying the links by states is a good idea, the clutter and small font does nothing for visitors’ eyeballs. As stated before, text links are ineffective as calls to action on pages like these and the close proximity of these links jumbles everything together to look like one cohesive blue link.

There is no clear call to action here. This webmaster would benefit from making this page a second page and redesigning the home page to include one or two buttons only, leading people to “Get a Quote”.

Here is a trick: Squint your eyes slightly to blur your vision and look at the page. If your call to action doesn’t stand out, adjustments may need to be made.

7. Button Placement & Location

Though this website is committing many faux pas, I chose it due to improper placement of the call to action button.

If you look on the far right (it probably took you a few seconds to find it, which is a few seconds too long), you will find a small box with a dropdown menu. This is where the webmaster would like a user to click. The only element standing out is the small red arrow and that is even questionable.

The placement and location of your call to action button is equally as important as its size and color. A great call to action will not be effective if it is surrounded by too much text or not enough whitespace, or if it is located out of sight.

Generally, it’s important to keep call to action buttons above the fold (visitors can see it without scrolling), clearly visible and prominent in relation to all other elements. If you have content that is only visible by scrolling, include a call to action button towards the end so users do not have to scroll back up to click on it.

8. Button Size

Your website visitors should know exactly where they need to go the second they land on your website. In this example, though well-designed, this “Buy Now” call to action button seems a bit small for the animation of the site. If you click on the entire website, you will notice a busy background which can distract from the small button as well.

Please note, though, that a bigger button is not always associated with higher conversions. The button should stand out from the other design elements without overwhelming the entire design, which can turn people away as well.

9. Button Text

This website used the word “Go” to urge users to click for a quote. While the design does draw your eye to the quote box, I am not sure the word “Go” is the best choice.

Though there are some basic rules for button text to maximize conversions, it is more of a function of the type of website rather than a general consensus. For example, a business offering a free trial may use “Click Here to Get Your Free Trial” while a service-oriented website may use “Get Started Today”.

General rules of thumb for call to action button text:

• Avoid being too wordy
• Keep it simple
• Add urgency
• Limited availability if applicable
• Use action words like “now” or “today”
• Always split test

When it comes to elements such as button text, the only way to determine what works best is to split test. Sometimes, minor changes can increase conversion rates dramatically.

10. No Clear Message

Many businesses are not clear on their sales funnel; therefore, their visitors are not led to take a desired action. This dealership is trying to push users to perform too many actions at once along with reading text which can be boring for people looking to buy or lease a car.

TIP: The purpose of your call to action is to get users to the next step only. In the case of the dealership, the final goal would be to sell a car, but that should not be the main goal of the website. That is the car salesperson’s job. The website should only urge visitors to take the next step which is to visit the dealership.

Don’t try to sell a car with your website. Just sell the next step!

Have you seen any call to action crimes? What call-to-action crimes have you committed?

5 Reasons Why Holidays Lead To Increased Traffic

There are a number of reasons why holidays lead to increased website traffic, but here are the top 5:

Holidays are fun

Holidays are fun events for people. Fun leads to people being happy. When people are looking forward to fun things then they tend to spend more time focusing on those things. For most people, holidays are fun days throughout the year that they look forward to. When people look forward to something thye tend to spend time online looking for ideas on how they can get the most out of their holidays.

Time off from work

I think we can all agree that the more free time someone has the more likely his or her time spent online will increase. These days many of us work so much that we don’t have a lot of free time to spend searching the internet. All of that changes around holidays. Many people have time off from work, which allows them to spend more time doing other things, one of which is searching the internet.

Get together with friends and family

The holidays provide an opportunity to get together with friends and family. Whenever friends and family get together it usually means that they’ll be spending the day together, possibly eating, drinking, playing games, etc. When people get together a lot of times each person or family brings something to the party. If you’re in charge of one aspect of the party, then you might spend time online researching how to make that aspect of the party the best it can possibly be. If you need to make a certain dish for dinner, you may search for a recipe. If you’re in charge of entertainment, you may search for fun family games to play. The list goes on…

Planning leads to researching

Holidays require planning. Whether that means buying presents, decorating, preparing food, etc. many people must plan for upcoming holidays. Anytime someone needs to plan for an event like a holiday it usually leads to increased time spent online.

Traveling makes people look for something fun to do

Have you ever been on the road on or around the holidays? Traffic is horrible! That’s because many people travel on the holidays. When people are traveling, especially long distances or to places they have never been before, they usually spend time online researching their trip. It could be that they are looking for fun things to do near the place they are traveling to. It could be that they want to find places to stop along the way. Whatever it is that people are looking for, the key is that they are online looking for something. Knowing this provides an opportunity for website owners to capture some of that search traffic.

Now that we know the reasons why holidays can lead to increased website traffic, let’s review the best holidays for generating more website traffic.

3 Holidays To Take Advantage Of

All holidays provide an opportunity to generate more website traffic. With that said, over the years I’ve seen that some holidays provide better opportunities than others. Below are the top 3 holidays that you should take advantage of for driving more traffic to your website.

Christmas

Christmas is the number one holiday for organic search. People are performing searches to look for gift ideas, for travel, to find fun things going on in their community, etc. Be sure to have your Christmas content up no later than December 1st. Usually people start searching for Christmas-related information right after Thanksgiving.

Independence Day

Independence Day is a HUGE website traffic driver. Friends and families are always looking for fun things to do on or around Independence Day. A big factor is that July 4th is a Summer holiday and people love to spend it outside with friends and family. People are searching for fireworks displays, fun local events, holiday sales opportunities, and much more. Coming up with a fun July 4th promotion, giveaway, or even a safety tips blog article would do wonders for increasing your website traffic.

Halloween

Halloween is another fantastic holiday that should be leveraged to increase your website traffic. Being that it’s a holiday for young children you get a lot of parents searching the web for the latest costume ideas, hayride and haunted house information, events, ghost stories, and much more. Halloween is relevant to so many different types of websites that it’s almost impossible not to be able to come up with some sort of tie-in. If all else fails, just come up with a spooky story for your blog.

All holidays present a great opportunity to increase your website traffic, but Christmas, Independence Day, and Halloween are the top three holidays to take advantage of based on my analysis over the past few years. If you cannot come up with content ideas for ALL holidays be sure that you at least take advantage of these three.

Planning For An Upcoming Holiday

In order to capitalize on holiday web traffic, you must come up with a solid plan for how you will go about capturing some of that traffic. It’s important to start your planning well in advance of the holiday. Here are a few questions that you should answer when planning for an upcoming holiday:

• How can I tie-in the upcoming holiday to my website topic?
• What type of person am I trying to attract to my website?
• What can I create on my website that might interest the type of person I’m trying to attract?
• What keywords should I use within my holiday-related website content?
• What other tools can I use to attract more website visitors (ie. social media)?

By answering these questions you will start to form ideas for what promotions or content you’ll produce for the upcoming holiday.

10 Tips To Boost Traffic During Holidays

Understanding that holidays are great for increasing website traffic is important, but now that we know that, it’s time to start coming up with ideas for taking advantage of holidays. Remember, with a little creativity, almost ANY website (no matter your website topic) should be able to come up with ideas for taking advantage of holidays. Below are 10 ideas for taking advantage of holidays to help get you started. Not all of the ideas below will be relevant to your website, but you should be able to take advantage of a few of them OR modify any of them to work for your website.

1. Simply offer a holiday discount on a product or service
2. Run a holiday-related contest. If you don’t sell a product or service you can buy a Visa or American Express gift card (or any other cool prize that you think your readers will value) to give to the winner.
3. Write a story on your blog about the upcoming holiday. Ideas include, but are not limited to, the history of the holiday, a little known fact about the holiday, a personal experience, etc.
4. Provide a list of fun things to do with friends or family during the upcoming holiday.
5. Write a short E-Book about the holiday and make it available for free download in exchange for readers’ email addresses and an opt-in to your newsletter or for future email communications.
6. Publish a favorite holiday recipe.
7. Gather Sales information from local retailers and publish it to your website as a ‘Savings Guide’ for your readers.
8. Partner with another website to run a contest or giveaway. This cross-promotion technique can attract organic search traffic, but it also allows both you and your partner to share website traffic (increasing traffic for both parties).
9. Publish a list of local events going on in your geographic area related to the holiday.
10. Create a list of volunteer opportunities that people can participate in during the holiday. Volunteering information attracts a lot of website traffic around the holidays and you can definitely take advantage of some of that traffic by coming up with a list of volunteering opportunities that’s relevant to your website topic.

Again, not all of the ideas above will work for your website, but there should be a few that do. The important thing to remember is that holidays are great for increasing your website traffic. With a little planning and creativity, no matter what your website topic is, you should be able to take advantage of one or more holidays throughout the year in order to increase traffic to your website.

Are you currently using holidays to increase your website traffic? What are some of the things that you do in order to capitalize on holiday website traffic? Leave your comments below.

Why are QR codes here to stay?

As of now QR codes are still facing everyday debates. On one side are the stakeholders who want the general public to fall in love with the new technology while on the other side are the critics who consider QR codes as nothing more than a new marketing fad. I will try to sit in between the two and judge the situation.

I am assuming that QR codes are going to stick around our heads no matter what, as marketing agencies are using them like crazy. The big ugly black squares aren’t leaving us that quick. I know that there are other options (and more will be invented) for linking in the real world but QR codes look to me to be the best suited option currently.

Before listing genuine reasons, let me mention some of the authentic reports that support the rise of QR codes:

• Mobio Technologies - A study by Mobio Technologies Inc. confirms that the usage of QR code jumped upto 9,840% in the second quarter of the year 2011 when compared to the numbers last year in the same time period.
• Gartner – The marketing research firm confirms the high-rise in the usage of QR codes in recent times.
• comScore – The very famous comScore sent shivers down the Internet Marketing industry when they confirmed that around 14 million Americans scanned QR codes from their cell phones in the month June of 2011. That is huge when compared to the time period since when QR codes have been in America.

The data above confirms the ever-increasing usage of QR codes and the interest of end users. Sometimes it is really comfortable to scan a QR code on the back of a book. It takes minutes to reach the landing page of that book and buy another copy for your friend. You just skipped a lot of steps.

Now, let me list a few reasons in favor of QR codes:

• Cost involved: Seriously, the cost involved behind the implementation of QR codes is one of the most important reason why it will be a success. An agency which is already printing ads need not invest anything extra to publish QR codes in those print ads. Just get your QR code ready and push it into all your billboards.
• Ease of Implementation and the Positive Results: Implementing QR codes is quite easy. You really don’t need a separate department to handle them. Moreover, the end results are greater engagement and a decreased bridge between the physical and online world.
• Hardly any Competitors: Critics have tagged QR codes as a short-term fad but nobody has actually been able to come up with a better alternative. There are hardly any competitors of QR code technology.
• Variety of Usages: Retailers can gift consumers with plenty of surprises if they scan their QR codes. Discounts, surprise offers and freebies are just few suggestions that will keep QR codes attractive.
• Instantaneous Access: QR codes provide instant access to consumers for their products and related offers. It is this bridge which increases the inclination towards QR codes.

QR Code Marketing Tips

Now that we are sure about the future of QR codes, I guess it is time to understand how we can cash in upon the ever evolving technology. Here goes my quick tips for QR Code Marketing:

• Focus: See, QR codes can be used to perform multiple tasks. It is very important for marketing agencies to focus on exactly what they are expecting back from QR code marketing. One must decide as to what their QR code will do and stick to the same. If the marketing campaign distributes one QR code all around its area of expansion then it will avoid confusion at the end-user level. Also, consumers will know what the company is up to and what it is trying to present. In short, things become simpler for everyone.
• Be Truthful: Advertisers get the opportunity to leave a pitch next to their QR code. One can use this small space to attract consumers to scan the QR code. The end results might just be a huge turn off for the consumer if advertisers try to fool them with their pitch. If you say that scanning the QR code will result in a surprise gift then better give a gift. Right?

• Unique Designs: It is important that you merge QR codes with your regular marketing campaigns. If it’s at odds with your normal marketing style this will cause your viewers to feel unsettled.

• Analyze Results: Just like a webmaster analyzes traffic results to understand if his marketing campaign is bringing in results, similarly every QR code campaign must be analyzed to understand if it is bringing in positive results or not. If the landing page gets good traffic and visitors spend a good amount of time on that page then the QR campaign is surely a success. Analyze and edit your campaign for better results.
• Look for Alternatives: One must not stick to a QR code campaign if it ends up killing other traffic sources like Twitter and Facebook. There are times where a particular brand’s followers just don’t have the QR code app in their cellphones. It is useless to pitch QR codes to them. Again, analyze and use what actually works for the brand.

What not to do with QR Code Marketing

1. MailChimp

This service is maybe the most popular on the internet and is well-known in the e-mail marketing arena due to its focus on usability, design and heavy marketing. However, MailChimp offers much more than a funny mascot and good design. It is actually a powerful tool you can use. It is incredibly easy to use although it offers many high-end features. The main dashboard is optimized and is the place where it all starts – all the web applications can be added, deleted and customized from there.

Many experts in e-mail marketing lack HTML skills and MailChimp gives a helping hand here as well. You can use your own code, but if you don’t have enough knowledge of web design, then you can use the available free templates. They are tested and optimized for MailChimp, therefore using one of them may even be better than creating your own. If you own a MailChimp premium account, you will be able to use all the premium templates for free.

MailChimp

Another advantage of MailChimp is the way you can populate the mailing list, where this great tool offers lots of options. You can even build your form or use one of the available ones. You can even embed a form into your site and MailChimp makes it easy for you to customize it.

There are also iPhone and Android applications you can use for MailChimp and one of their great features is their push technology which lets you know all about the contact you’ve flagged as VIP. This way it is easier to monitor specific clients and get all the information about them in a matter of seconds. MailChimp can easily be integrated with third-party services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google suite, SurveyGizmo, Zendesk, Capsule, Amazon or eBay.

The features that stand out at MailChimp are the sleek interface and design, the premium high quality templates, the “forever free” membership, the third-party service integration and the VIP monitoring of subscribers.

There are many pricing options if you wish to use MailChimp and regardless of your needs, I am sure this service has something for you.

The conclusion is that MailChimp is the most popular e-mail marketing service on the internet for a reason. It offers many useful features that make it unique on the market and it is also easy to use for anybody. The “forever free” plan is also a very good way to start.

2. Campaign Monitor

This tool is another important service in the marketplace and is well-known for its design and development community. It is not easy to cover all the features it offers, because there are literally tons of them, but we can take a look at the key ones.

Campaign Monitor is very easy to use, thanks to its main dashboard which is optimized for usability and useful users guide. Moreover, all fields that require filling in are accompanied by a brief description, so that you will never fill the fields in with incorrect information.

If you use Campaign Monitor the service lets you save the templates you use in order to reuse them again. You also get two sample templates for free and you can even customize them to fit your needs. The templates are coded and optimized for Campaign Monitor, but they need to be downloaded and then imported into your account. This might not be a problem for the more advanced users, but if you are less experienced it might be a deal-breaker.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor integrates Analytics among its best features and lets you manage subscribers and do many other things in the same area; not having to jump to separate areas of the dashboard is definitely a plus. Campaign Monitor lets you integrate the service with lots of third-party software, so it is easy to launch your campaign from wherever you want. Testing is also very easy to do and this is important, because it is a crucial part of every campaign. However, you will have to pay $5 for each additional test you want to conduct.

The key features of this service are the pre-loaded templates, free and ready to go, the resale tools, Analytics integration, e-commerce integration (with Shopify and Magento among others), the testing capability and the integration with Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.

Like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor offers a variety of pricing options including monthly, high volume or pay as you go. You can purchase monthly plans for unlimited campaigns or simply pay for each of the campaigns you run.

The conclusion is that Campaign Monitor is another leader in the marketplace and with its reasonable pricing it’s an option you should look into if you need an e-mail marketing service. The system is very easy to use and powerful and it is ideal for everybody, but it might be good to have some technical experience for the most advanced features and modules.

3. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a bit different from the other two we’ve talked about, because it targets a different market, relying on, and very dependent on, social referrals via Facebook.

Constant Contact is also very easy to use and one of the advantages is the fact that you can phone them for help, real-time chat and the learning center. There are also seminars you can attend to get started with this tool, which is perfect for small business.

Getting started with Constant Contact is not as easy as with the other two, but it is not difficult either once you play with it once or twice. The service is set up for a low-tech approach which is shown by the huge number of templates. However, they do not look fantastic, but pay off in the end through the sheer volume.

You can use the templates even if you are not an expert in HTML, because the editor ensures you will not corrupt them. It is easy to add content (which can be done by dragging and dropping) and to customize it afterwards.

Constant Contact

This service targets business owners who require services such as online surveys and event marketing, therefore it offers different features than the first two we’ve reviewed. With the event manager you can promote and sell tickets for events (with Google Checkout and PayPal integrated so clients can pay right there), while the marketing system helps you promote and announce events.

Although online surveys might not sound related, they are a great addition because by creating and promoting them you can figure out what your subscribers are into. This helps because you don’t have to conduct campaigns outside of Constant Contact. This concept is simple to use, very useful and everybody considers it a key feature. Other unique features are the social media integration, template library, e-mail building using drag and drop, help options and spam testing solutions.

Constant Contact has several different payment options, but all of them are monthly fees. The fees depend on the number of subscribers, but there are lots of discounts if you pre-pay, so you might opt to pre-pay to get a better price. They offer a 60 day trial works if you want to see how the service works, this should b enough time to see whether or not this is the right option for you.

Although it is not as visual as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor, it is also a serious and important service in the marketplace, thanks to its unique features and event promotion capabilities.

4. iContact

This service is mainly targeted to professionals with the need for a robust feature set, while not neglecting the basic features every e-mail marketing service needs.

One of the disadvantages of iContact is the fact that the interface is a bit difficult to use and it takes some time to get used to; some people might even feel overwhelmed by the number of options they have on the landing page. However,  iContact offers a number of good features, like the integration of an RSS-to-email tool. This allows users to send e-mail to a list of RSS subscribers and iContact is one of the few e-mail marketing services to offer this.

Another good feature of this service is the option to automatically send a series of auto-responses. For example, when someone subscribes to one of your lists, you can automatically send him several e-mails over a period of time, and can include offers and special information, but also call to action buttons in these mails. This will help you work faster and will make the contact with the clients more automatic.

iContact

Although it is not WordPress, iContact has its own blogging platform where you can post content and then send it to subscribers. Unfortunately you can’t integrate this platform with another one and API for WordPress would be a very good addition to this feature. iContact integrates Twitter and Facebook very well and allows you to create e-mail sign-up forms on your Facebook page.

You can also conduct surveys with iContact, which is always a good feature because it gives you an insight into what your audience likes and wants.

Some of the key features of iContact are the RSS-to-email service, the spam testing and auto-response options, built-in survey tools and the extensive social media integration for Facebook and Twitter. iContact membership can only be bought on a monthly or yearly basis and the pricing can be seen here. There are several payment options and you can also try the service for free.

The bottom line is that iContact is a service you should consider, but not if you are a small company or are not prepared to take some time to learn your way around the dashboard. iContact targets large companies with a need for premium features and therefore you might not need it for simple tasks only.

5. AWeber

AWeber is another top e-mail marketing service on the internet, although it really has nothing that stands out at first glance – however, you might be surprised if you dig in deeper.

The panel is easy to use and it does not take a lot of time to get used to if you have a bit of experience working with other control panels, but it might be confusing if you have no experience with e-mail marketing at all.

AWeber offers lots of tools for creating sign-up forms and helps you run A/B testing and find which form works best for you – quite a unique feature on the web today. All these forms you create can be embedded into other websites and there is also a WordPress plugin that allows you to display the form on blogs running the PHP platform.

AWeber

The third-party integration is very interesting, because it is unique as well. This allows you to set up e-mail parsers to skim the confirmation e-mails in your payment system, if you have one. The service focuses a lot on growing your mailing list and is optimized in such a way that no other service is. If you dig a bit more into the e-mail parsers options you will find a lot more options and you will definitely start loving AWeber.

Like iContact, AWeber can also send sequential auto-responses. This is one of the key features of AWeber, but also the bunch of e-mail templates (more than 150), sign-up form templates (more than 100), extensive sign-up form optimization tool, the WordPress plugin for embedding forms, blog-to-mail automation and the e-mail parsers.

AWeber can be used with a monthly fee, depending on the number of subscribers you have. The first month you will only have to pay $1. Unfortunately the service can’t be used on a trial basis, which is a bit weird, but the $1 for the first month is not a big commitment either.

The conclusion is that AWeber is one of the most surprising services on the web, offering many unique and useful features, especially the great e-mail parsers.

Conclusion

As you can see, it is not easy to choose the right e-mail marketing service for you business and it might also take some time and money until you find the perfect one. I hope this article spares you some money and time and will make you choose the best option to fit your needs.

Use Your Location in Keywords, Headings, Meta tags, Anchor Text, and Page Body

Ranking well for local search isn’t very different from ranking well for a particular keyword. The main principle is the same – have keyword-rich content. The simplest you can do to rank well locally is to put your location in all those places that matter – i.e. the keywords, the headings, the meta tags, the anchor text of backlinks, and the page body of your pages.
For instance, if you are a Web designer from New York, and you are interested in local clients only because you are not too excited about onsite visits in California, for example, you can use the key phrase “Web designer New York” everywhere instead of simply “Web designer”.

Well, sometimes it is very artificial (and grammatically incorrect) to use your location in your target places, so if you are really concerned about this, you can modify it to “Web designer in New York”, for example. This will improve your local rankings for sure because Google and the other search engines strip articles and prepositions from the search string anyway. However, in this case, you won’t be ranking that well in all those searches that seek for an exact match (i.e. “Web designer New York”) and if these queries bring you a lot of traffic, you really need to think if it makes sense to sacrifice good traffic for grammar rules.

Even if you don’t put your location in your keyword every time you use it, if your location is present on your pages, this still helps. The simplest approach is to use your location here and there on the page, preferably closer to your keywords because search engines consider the proximity of search terms on the page. You can also add pictures of your city and your office and include your location in the description you put in the ALT attribute of the IMG tag. A map how to get to your office helps a lot, too.

Additionally, don’t forget to put your address, zip code, and phone number (provided that they all are local, of course) on every page. This has two advantages: you will have your location keyword on every page for sure and you will be easier to contact.

On the other hand, you need to make sure that your use of the location as part of your keyword stays within the acceptable boundaries. Therefore, you need to be very careful not to keyword stuff your pages because this can get you banned from search engines rather than boost your rankings with them.

If you operate in only one location, it is easier to optimize your site for it. However, what do you do, if you have branches in more than one location? Do you put them all in the keywords, headings, meta tags, etc.? No, you don’t – this will create a complete mess because there is hardly a person, who will search for a “Web designer New York Los Angeles Paris”, for example. The best you can do is to create separate pages or even better – a separate domain/subdomain for your separate locations and optimize them accordingly. If you are a huge company, separate domains and sites for each country are a must but even a small company with offices in multiple locations will benefit to separate the site into sections based on location.

Incorporate Rich Snippets in Your Pages

One of the advanced steps towards optimization for local search is to use Rich Snippets for Local Search. Rich Snippets are semantic tools that use microdata, microformats, and RDFa and they are great for sites with d content. Basically, you label your location using a predefined format and this is how you tell Google you are a local company.

Rich Snippets aren’t suitable for every type of site. If you don’t have structured content that falls into the information types currently supported by Google, i.e., “reviews, people profiles, products, business listings, recipes, and events.”, you will hardly benefit much from this feature. Rich Snippets won’t affect your ranking with search engines and as Google themselves admit, “Google does not guarantee that markup on any given page or site will be used in search results.”, so don’t rely too heavily on them.

It won’t require lots of effort to make your site semantically search friendly because you will be using information that is already existing on your page. E-Business and Web Science Research Group offers a handy tool to create your snippets and you can preview them with the Rich Snippets Testing Tool. The screenshot below shows how a rich snippet might look like in search results.

Submit to Google Places, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, Local Directories, and Search Engines

In addition to the onpage factors and the anchor text of backlinks, you can go local in some other ways. If you manage to get quality backlinks from local authority sites, this is a huge bonus, even if you don’t have all your target keywords in the anchor text.

Local directories and search engines, such as Google Places, Bing Local, or Yahoo Local are also to be considered not only as a way to get listed in them for the purpose of backlinks but also as ways to get direct exposure to your local audience. Besides, almost any place under the Sun has similar sites where you can get listed, so search for what is available in your case and submit your site.

The good old Web directories, especially their local varieties are also to be considered. If there are Yellow Pages for your city and local ads section on Craigslist and other similar classified ad sites, don’t skip them – they also help to get popular locally.

Get Local on Social Media and in PPC

Finally, social media and PPC are some more alternatives to explore. If your region has groups or any other similar sections on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, make sure you join them and be as active as possible. This will have a direct impact on your popularity in the local community. Also, when you register profiles at any site, be sure to enter your location.

Very often you can’t rely on organic search alone and you will need to use advertising, such as PPC. Fortunately, almost any reputable CPC network allows geotargeting, so you can precisely select that your ad is shown only to visitors from the region you are interested in.

Ranking well locally has many benefits and it isn’t very difficult to achieve. The rewards can be lucrative and this is why it makes sense to optimize your site for local search. As you see, this isn’t that difficult to do.

The study also analyzed the source and location of QR code scanning, finding that users are most likely to scan codes found in newspapers/magazines and on product packaging and do so while at home or in a store.

What are QR Codes?

QR codes look like UPC codes but they are capable of storing much more data as well as alphanumeric characters. You scan the codes with your mobile devices by snapping photos with a QR code reader.

QR codes are used by companies to market their businesses and extend the reach of their brands. When a customer/prospect scans the code with their mobile device, the code will reveal information the company adds to it. This information can be text or a link to a website or custom landing page. The marketing possibilities are endless.

How are marketers using QR codes? Here are some cool and inspiring uses and strategies:

Don’t forget to click the images for more information about QR codes!

1. T-shirts

Clothing of all sorts have become a popular background for QR codes. Hats, belt buckles and even tattoos are making an appearance.

2. Stamps

Use QR codes on envelope labels to display additional business information when you mail out letters and advertising media.

3. TV Commercials

Businesses are using television commercials to advertise special coupons in QR codes.

Bluefly.com used QR codes during a 45 second commercial for “The Real Housewives of New York City”. Scanners would be linked to a special video episode and given a discount coupon of $30 off $150 at Bluefly.com.

4. Creative Advertisement

Creative uses of color and style applied to QR codes:

This advertisement for Pepsi Max uses the QR code as an integral part of the ad. It is creative and isolates the code enough to draw attention to it.

5. Real Estate

Real estate professionals use QR codes to link to special websites or contact information.

Some realtors use QR codes to link to additional property photos viewable while a client is on the property. It can also be beneficial to display additional rental information and apartment specifications. Using QR codes for contact information is also a great way to get scanners to bookmark it and save it for future use.

6. Business Cards

A stylish example of what you can do with QR codes on an ordinary business card.

7. Product Placement

A creative representation of how QR codes can enhance your products:

The Montreal bakery, clever cupcakes, used QR codes on edible materials. Bakeries are now starting to adopt these methods and using edible QR codes to send customers to a Facebook fan page or coupons for future visits.

8. Special Offers

Coupons and special offers are one of the most popular uses for QR codes.

Restaurants can use QR codes on offsite ads to display special coupons and also to link to their menus. QR codes, in these cases, are great tools to display information that wouldn’t normally fit on a standard advertisement space.

9. Free Music Downloads

Music downloads appeal to the entertainment lover and offer a chance for artists to showcase their music.

Rock star Mickey Hart offers free music downloads to his fans. At his gigs, he hands out music cards with QR codes that link to free music.

10. Product Information

QR codes can link to additional product information in retail stores.

Stores like Verizon and Best Buy are already taking advantage of QR code technology. In the store, they use codes to link to user guides and additional product information that can be bookmarked for later viewing and shared with others.

Tip: Remember to make the information behind a QR code interesting enough to bookmark, share or keep customers coming back for more.

You should also link to a mobile website or web page. It’s very important to design a mobile experience for your customers/prospects since the platform calls for it. Also, send scanners to a landing page with a specific purpose. It should include a video, coupon or exclusive information only available to the person who scanned the code. This will increase your success rate.

There are literally hundreds of creative ideas and uses for QR codes. Have you used QR codes? What is your experience?

What are Internet Memes and Why You Should Care

An internet meme is a cultural phenomenon, spreading like a virus, traveling from one person to another swiftly until it takes on a life of its own. “Meme’ is pronounced as ‘meem’, which rhymes with ‘seem’ or ‘team’. Meme is a term coined by Richard Dawkins.

Internet memes are usually jokes, urban legends, viral videos, funny pictures or contagious music. Memes today hugely influence modern language and culture. They shape how the youth, and the whole internet user population for that matter, live their lives.

Marketing, advertising and promotions professionals embrace internet memes, because it’s inexpensive and trendy; plus its unique characteristic is to spread like a virus.

The more people go online, the stronger memes will be. Memes equals money. Internet memes have assisted in producing fame and fortune for many people, transforming nobodies to overnight sensations in the blink of an eye. Memes are a great opportunity; always at work even during your offline hours, always up for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Science behind the Power of Internet Memes

What is the science behind the power of internet memes? The year 2000 onwards foresaw the meme phenomena, which subtly represents the tones of today’s social etiquette and culture. Today’s culture and humor keeps on evolving everyday. The cultural impact of internet memes cannot be ignored. In fact, it can even be a tool for self-promotion, branding and marketing that will ensure your fame and success.

To prove our point, we’ll give you an example. One of the most popular memes of all time is the many pictures of the cat with funny, captions that throw grammar out the window. It is created by Hawaiian blogger  Eric Nakagawa with girlfriend Kari Unebasami. Do you know how much these cat pictures are worth?

The Original 'I can has cheezburger?' (Image from Mental Floss)

Nakagawa’s website dedicated to lolcats is now worth $2 million. It is the most popular internet web site displaying pictures of cats, receiving as many as 1.5 million hits in a day. In a year the page receives over half a billion, yep billion, page visits, making it in league with other major news empires’ sites like the Huffington Post or NY Times. They’re being extra profitable, just by creating memes. Nakagawa’s web site generates images of these adorable cats and kittens with humorous captions. Pretty impressive, for cats.

These memes are outrageously funny, and they don’t need a lot of time to enjoy. They take a few minutes of your time, and in the case of the lolcats, only a few seconds of your time. But don’t start thinking coming up with a meme is easy. Scientists and researchers have tried to study and understand memes. Every detail is taken into account, to know why this meme succeeded and why another meme failed.

Researchers have difficulty studying memes, because unlike previous cultural phenomenons, the internet meme does not have the problem of lacking cultural artifacts, but rather its exponential growth. Memes spread like wildfire from social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Reddit.

Memes are highly unpredictable and untraceable: there is no hard science on which picture, video, or joke will go viral next. In fact, a meme can be ignored for a long time before it explodes. One good example is Rebecca Black’s Friday video, which was uploaded on February 2011 before comedian Michael J. Nelson tweeted about it saying ‘Songwriting isn’t for Everyone’. It became infamous almost overnight.

The lesson here is that we can’t force a meme to become a viral hit. You do have to rely on luck a little bit. Memes may bring you different results than what you expected. To be honest, memes are more of an art than a science.

Top Memes of the Past Decade

I will share with you the top memes of the last ten years (erroneous sentence, because memes didn’t exist before that) and why they are so successful. What made these internet memes click? What did we learn from them and how can we achieve the same success?

1. Planking

Planking, also known as the lying down game, is an activity that consists of a person lying face down with arms at the sides, photographed and shared online. The term ‘planking’ refers to the activity of imitating a wooden plank. Plankers try to find the most unusual and most humorous places to ‘plank’. Some of the most unusual places to plank include roofs, poles, on top of vehicles, even on toilets.

Image from Baller Status

Planking (Image from Heavy)

Extreme Planking with the Help of Photoshop (Image by Fred Caiveau)

Planking has led to other variations such as owling, jebbing, teacupping,and lately, horsemanning etc. It has its own holiday, ‘Global Planking Day’. Even big celebrities like Katy Perry, Chris Brown, Tom Green and Justin Bieber have joined in on the fun.

Katy Perry Planking (Image from Popcrush)

Although planking seems like a harmless enough game, there are always daredevils out there who seem to want to be in trouble’s way. Planking has caused many accidents or issues.

Dangerous Planking (Image from Free Jokes Funny)

Seven doctors and nurses have allegedly been suspended for ‘planking’ while on duty. One man has also been arrested for planking on a police vehicle. Worse, A 20 year old man, Acton Beale, fell to his death after attempting to plank on a 7th floor balcony in Australia.

2. Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’

Rebecca Black is the epitome of ‘Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all’. Her video ‘Friday’ on YouTube has 3.1 million dislikes (or 87.1% of the total ratings). Despite that, she has amassed 167 million views and hundreds of parodies. It is the 22nd most viewed video on YouTube of all time, before it was taken down on June 16 as per Black’s request.

If you take a look at her ‘Friday’ video, you’ll see that the song lyrics are terrible, and the video just mediocre and the use of auto-tune was heavily criticized as well.She’s now a millionaire because of her publicity (albeit negative). ‘Friday’ was hated by the public, but proved to be a commercial success: in a matter of days, iTunes received 2 million downloads and with an iTunes payout of $0.70 per download, earning the singer about US $1.4 million in just a few days. Not bad for a thirteen-year-old.

3. Chuck Norris Jokes

Chuck Norris jokes are about the martial artist and actor Chuck Norris, stating exaggerated claims about Chuck Norris’  strength, ability, toughness, endurance, or everything else what makes him awesome. The claims are mostly absurd which is what makes them so hilarious. These jokes have spread around the globe via the internet.

Image from Techworld

The Chuck Norris jokes first appeared on Late night with Conan O’Brien, and started appearing on the internet. It was a huge hit. Chuck Norris himself was flattered and found them humorous, but tries to not take them seriously.

Some of our favorite Chuck Norris jokes are:

‘Chuck Norris counted to infinity… twice.’

‘Chuck Norris has already been to Mars. That is why there are no signs of life there.’

‘Chuck Norris doesn’t cheat death, he beat it fair and square.’

‘Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.’

‘Chuck Norris made a Happy Meal cry.’

4. Famous Dancing Baby

The famous dancing baby animation, also known as Baby Cha Cha, is a short 3D animation of a baby, dancing cha-cha to the intro of the song ‘Hooked on a Feeling’. This short animation is among the earliest examples of internet memes, having spread through chain e-mails.

It has appeared in several shows and parodies, where it became a recurrent hallucination in the ‘Ally McBeal’ series.

We love babies, they’re cute and adorable, ergo babies sell. We love them more if they can do crazy things they normally can’t. The Dancing Baby Meme was so popular it even spawned many imitations, parodies, remixes. One such is the viral ad ‘Evian Roller Babies’ featuring babies dancing and hopping in skates.

5. People of Wal-Mart

People of Wal-Mart features heavyweight, poorly dressed and just plain crazy people who shop at Wal-Mart. The pictures are absurd, silly, weird, and some are just gross. You can check all the funny pictures on their official website. Basically the web site mocks the shoppers of Wal-Mart. This internet meme is not for everyone, as it may offend some people, but you’re invited to check it out or just leave.

6. Demotivational Posters

Demotivational posters are spoofs of the often clichéd motivational posters found in corporate offices and such. Like a motivational poster, it consists of a single picture, with a black border, with an all caps title in white, usually a serif font. Most often it is followed by a subheading in smaller font.

The purpose of motivational posters is to inspire, demotivational posters work the opposite: they are pessimistic in nature. These are among the most common internet memes today, seen all over the cyberspace and shared among social networking sites. There are now dozens of websites dedicated to generating these hilarious demotivational posters.

These posters are effective because they’re simple, sweet and fast. They’re really funny too. It shows that one strong, single picture can be very devastatingly powerful when paired with witty copy.

7. Y U NO Guy

Y u no guy is a cartoon featuring a highly annoyed face, with his hands out and palms outward, as if screaming ‘Y U NO?’. It characteristically uses ‘text’ style grammar. It first appeared on Tumblr on LOLTumblrWallpapers, which instantly received 10,000 reblogs.

Inspiration for Y U NO GUY (Image from Know your Meme)

Y U NO GUY is inspired by a character from Gantz, on Chapter 55: Naked King. His facial expression shows extreme rage and frustration.

Other internet meme characters that are part of the Rage comics include Cereal Guy, Lol Guy, Okay Guy, Forever Alone, PFFFFT, Troll face, Me Gusta and more.

Other Meme Characters

Memes as Promotional and Marketing Tools

Memes should not be seen as a link building tool, but rather as an effective promotional and marketing tool. Viewers can relate better to a meme than a long article. Thus it is effective in creating a loyal online following base, where they can keep on coming back to your website. The meme can create ‘trust’ and ‘loyalty’ in your web base, an integral value in marketing.

But memes can travel from one site to another, from one social networking site to another, thus you cannot be the sole carrier of the meme even if you are the owner. How can your site benefit from the meme if this is the case?

Of course you are recognized as the source of the meme. As the internet meme gets more popular, searches increase and thus bring more visitors to your web site. Successful meme marketing is a lot like viral marketing. It builds up online credibility, increasing social popularity. More and more people come to your site web site. If they enjoy it, they share it to their fellow friends. Thus it creates a domino effect, reaching millions of viewers in a short time. Memes are like a self-replicating virus.

Memes may work like magic overnight, or they may take time to spread. Social networking web sites aid in spreading your internet meme. Because of this, social networking is the perfect avenue to test the success of your meme by tracking its popularity and reading comments and reviews. Memes are still largely unknown and mysterious even to the best researchers, but one thing is known: memes are one of the most important tools in online marketing today.

The best way to use Facebook as a marketing tool is to create a Facebook Fan Page that is related to your business, but the fans on that Facebook page don’t appear magically. You have to compel Facebook users to click on that ‘LIKE’ button on the top of your Facebook Page and make you feel good about using Facebook for your marketing. Everyone nowadays wants more and more fans but it’s not that easy to get them. I have worked on many start ups, and have helped those start ups increase the number of Fans on their Facebook Pages from nil to a respectable number, and thus from that experience, I can talk about some effective tricks here, to help you raise the number of fans on your Facebook Page, and make you feel good about it.

Embed a Facebook Fan Box on Your Blog/Website

This is the most common method to increase the number of Fans for your Facebook page. The Facebook Fan Box is actually an application, and rather a plugin on the Facebook, whose code can be copied from there and easily inserted in your Website/Blog. The design of the Facebook Fan box is already very compelling, having a ‘LIKE’ button at the top, but it can be optimized and designed better so that it increases the chance of your Blog/Website’s visitor becoming a Fan of your Facebook Page.