Yearly Archives: 2008

Internet Marketing

Rand Fishkin over at SEOMoz very kindly invited me to this week’s Whiteboard Friday to discuss personas in internet marketing. If you’ve never seen a Whiteboard Friday, they’re brief videos, hosted by Rand, that discuss various internet marketing topics. You can see the video here. Does the camera make me look fat? Or just show… Read More

SEO

K, I had a great day today, so I’m cheery. That means it’s time to tear an internet marketing scam into a pile of tiny bits and pieces. Today’s victim is SEO Confessions, a site that guarantees everything except the apparent author’s hairstyle: I have no problem with the format. It’s a landing page and… Read More

Internet Marketing

Jonathan bravely stepped up and volunteered his site for a review and recommendations. First off, Jonathan, this is solid. The look is simple and clean, and nothing blinks. That puts you in the top 99% of web sites. Seriously, it looks good. First impression is positive, and that’s important: And you’re using Feedburner for your… Read More

Analytics

If you’re using Google Analytics, Google Adwords and ‘auto-tagging’, you may have noticed that your numbers suddenly dropped: It’s not you. We’ve researched this and contacted Google. Here’s what we found out: Apparently, this is only occurring for folks using auto-tagging. If you’re using UTM codes, you’re fine. Google is aware of the problem and… Read More

Design & Development

Hey! I’m not doing this any more. Click this link for my nifty new video site reviews. Once, a long time ago, I contacted Alan Weiss of Summit Consulting. I asked him if I could review his site on my blog. He replied: NO. YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION. In all caps, just like that.… Read More

Random

Timewaster alert! There is nothing of practical use in this post. It’s funny though. I was poring through my comment list today, feeling a bit punchy, so I made a list of spam subject lines. I’ve left out the inevitable grossness, drug advertisements, etc.. So, here are the 10 that made me choke on my… Read More

Internet Marketing

Test your subject lines, and you can easily double your open rate (the number of people who read your message). If you use an e-mail marketing service, such as Whatcounts or Emma, they deliver 3 critical statistics: E-mails sent. E-mails opened. Links clicked. If you’re not using one of these services, you need to. Prices… Read More

Internet Marketing

The R word is in the American air again: Recession. Hard to believe it hasn’t already hit, given the money pouring out of the USA, the lack of money coming in, and our, cough, leadership. OK, I just got political for a second. I’m sorry. Note that I’m not specifying any particular leaders, though. Republicans… Read More

Random

I laughed out loud at this article: http://www.ppcvillain.com/article_6.htm

Internet Marketing

I spent the day today looking at pitch pieces by a few internet marketing ‘experts’. Now I feel dirty. But, in the interest of promoting knowledge, here I am, passing along knowledge gained at the expense of my appetite. There were a few selling strategies that all of the pitches had in common. So, here… Read More

Internet Marketing

Sure, I could try to predict what’ll work in 2008. But I’ll point to things like great marketing copy, audience measurement and analytics, your eyes will roll back in your head and my subscriber count will fall even further. It’s much more fun to point out what’ll flop in 2008. Here are the Internet Marketing… Read More

Internet Marketing

You need an internet marketing strategy, even if it’s just “sell lots of stuff”. Here’s how you do it: Tear up the old marketing plan. Chances are, if your company’s been around for a few years, someone wrote you a marketing plan. It probably has an executive summary, spans 3 years, and cost a lot… Read More

Random

I don’t like the phrase ‘viral marketing’. If marketing works, it’s viral. If it doesn’t, it’s not. However, my team just completed three projects that are worthy of the title: PPCVillain.com, a hilarious look at how not to conduct a PPC campaign. Watch the first tutorial video – it’s worth it. DesigningWithGod.com, a blasphemous yet… Read More

Random

I have an amazing team working for me at Portent. They just finished a super cool Mac OS X Dashboard Widget that includes three internet marketing calculators: An ROI calculator: A cost per click calculator: And, my favorite, a click value calculator: It’s based on the click worth calculator I created way back.

Internet Marketing

Google’s webmaster tools are a great search marketing tool. But they’re also a fantastic internet marketing tool, because they let you peek into the heads of your audience, and see how search engines (and probably your customers) are classifying you. I recorded a brief video about it, and provided some quick guidance on getting set… Read More