Thursday, August 31, 2006

A little Blogtippin' for September

It's time for September's Blogtipping. Yeeeeeeha!! Here are some great blogs to be aware of:

  • Check out Sante's Search Engine Marketing blog - great tips to help drive traffic to your blog and you can work on your Spanish at the same time
  • Do you what Demand Generation is? If you're in B2B marketing, you should. If you're inteterested in some great insights from the B2b e-marketing area and learning more about demand generation, check out Steve Gershik's The Innovative Marketer. Steve has some good stories and podcasts.
  • My random blog is The Diva Marketing Blog which is a cute blog that focuses on business blogs. I like the style of this blog in terms of design but my tired eyes found it hard to see after a while. Toby does an excellent job about telling the stories of business bloggers.
Anyway, I hope that you enjoy these!

Chad H.



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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Paris Hilton plays games using ebay, Google and myspace

You may have thought that I've completely lost it but what I'm actually doing is an SEO experiment.

In my quest to drive traffic to my blog and to help others generate web traffic for their online campaigns, I've looked the the top keywords as defined by Wordtracker and listed them in my blog title as well as throughout this blog post. From what I've read, your blog should contain keywords that are fairly common in the search world. While these don't have too much to do with my blog, the concept does. Just like the name of my blog "Anything Goes" and this is an Anything Goes marketing experiment. In addition, if this works, you can perhaps use this tip for your own online campaigns or blog posts.

Here are some of the top keywords for today from Wordtracker:



1

Keyword
play games
Searches
4,559
2

games cheat4,384
3

google3,859
4

myspace3,831
5

ebay3,218
6

myspace.com2,939
7

yahoo2,738
8

top 100 baby names2,429
9

dogs2,183
10

jokes1,981
11

obituaries1,959
12

game cheats for ps21,941
13

paris hilton1,906
14

from1,883
15

mapquest1,853
16

yahoo.com1,786
17

funny quotes1,630
18

girls1,518
19

poetry1,506
20

radio stations1,475
21

names and their meanings1,469
22

find someone1,365
23

flowers1,308
24

jenna jameson1,305
25

dictionary1,238
26

weather1,208
27

google.com1,126
28

myspace layouts1,103
29

panic at the disco1,088
30

free diet1,031


So no, Paris Hilton does not play games on ebay, Google or myspace.com, but she might! Perhaps Paris Hilton is looking for the top 100 baby names for her dog? Maybe you can answer this for yourself Paris or tell us about your free diet or share some of your poetry!

I'm also going to do a social bookmark experiment and see how this does if I submit it to Digg and Reddit.

I'll let you know how this goes.

Chad

PS: here are some additional search tips:



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Monday, August 28, 2006

Increase lead generation, improve your contact us form.

Wow, ClickZ keeps up the great articles. Another great article on how to make it easier for people to get in touch with you via your Contact Us page. You think that this would be a simple concept but it isn't.

Ever see a website that has a million numbers that you should contact?

Brian Eisenberg at ClickZ found a great one by a company called Zaaz. Clicking on "Contact" brought up an easy to use form that only asked for the basic amount of information. It should be up to the company to not the user to sort out where the inquiry should go to. In addition, it had a unique way of letting the user know that their message would be responded to. On the confirmation page it says "Thank you for contacting ZAAZ. Your message is probably in our inbox already - the web is just that fast - and we look forward to dialogue." How cool is that?

In addition, Zaaz clearly laid out other ways to contact then either by phone or snail mail. Brian Eisenberg stresses how important this is. Why not go a step further and provide an online chat option?

I believe that simplicity is the way to go - have a simple web form and phone number that is clearly laid out and you should be good to go. The more you put the onus on the web user to decide if their request is sales or support related, the less leads your website is going to generate for you.

Blogs don't really need a contact us page as it's easy enough to leave you a comment (or at least it should be) but it would be interesting to add some sort of feedback form. Has anyone tried this?

Chad H

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Sunday, August 27, 2006

Blogtipping is approaching...

Have a great blog? Let me know about it by August 31 and I'll blogtip you. I've got 1-2 more spots.

Chad H.

PS - Blogtipping allows the blogosphere to blog about 3 interesting blogs that you have found.
PPS - If you want to blogtip me, that's cool too.

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Saturday, August 26, 2006

Email marketing tip - break out your lists

Good tip over on ClickZ in an article called "When an E-Mail Marketing Campaign Goes Bad". Try breaking out your email list based on the source of your list. In this way, you can determine where you should focus your marketing dollars on as your email opens and click-throughs will tell you what was successful and what wasn't.

Here are some examples:
  • If you're doing a new product launch email, you may want to at least break out your prospects vs. your existing customers.
  • If you're sending out a email newsletter, break out a list between those who have subscribed to your newsletter vs. those that are part of a list that you may have purchased. You can even dig down deeper to break out the list between those that have signed up say in the last 2 months vs. the rest of the newsletter subscription group. Get creative!
Keep experimenting and see what works. Remember, you can also slightly alter the content of your newsletter for your different segments that you're targeting - that's a whole blog post on its own.

Bloggers sending out their own email newsletters are becoming extremely popular. Problogger and Blog Traffic Kingare just two examples of very successful email blog newsletters (we need a better name for these - how about "blogletters" or "b-newsletter" ?). As your blog newsletter increases in popularity, don't forget to measure the key metrics that made you so popular. In addition, if you're looking at targeting some new key prospects, try experimenting with your lists as suggested above.

Chad

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People not reading your content? Here are some headlines that work

Marketing Sherpa released a case study this week that looked at how CareerBuilder.com increased its click-through rate by writing more informational content that its readers could appeal to.

Here are some of the top headlines that resulted in high click-through rates:
#1. Headlines with numbers
"7 Tips for Improving Your Cashflow"
"Top 10 Interview No No's"
"Top 10 Recruitment Myths -- Busted"
"Top 10 Sales Killers"
"5 Traits of Great Leaders"

#2. Stories with a controversial angle

"Are Your Employees Telling the Truth?"
"Eliminate 10% of Your Staff Each Year"
"Get Your Underperforming Employee to Quit -- Counseling Out"

#3. Humor
"Top 10 Excuses for Being Late"
Notice that most of these are either lists or stories that are controversial. You can apply this to your blog as well as Problogger recently demonstrated the successfulness of lists. In addition, one of the other reasons that Career Builder's newsletter became much more successful is becuase they moved away from using it as a sales tool and more of an informational piece. This is something that I had talked to earlier in my post "Linking Blogs and Newsletters Together".

Have fun blogging and remember that as good as your content may be, if the headline isn't good, no one will read it.

Chad H.

PS - Also check out the recent ClickZ article "Ten E-Mail Starters to Break Writer's Block".

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Lead generation using white papers

How are B2B companies generating leads these days? There are many methods - trade shows, contact us forms, webinars, you name it. I found a great blog on of these lead generation methods that focuses on white papers.

If you're looking at creating a white paper or trying to spice up an existing one, check out Michael Stezlner's Writing White Papers blog. He has a number of resources that you can have a look at as well.

When it comes to blogging, more and more bloggers are offering white papers as they:
  • Demonstrate expertise in a subject
  • Provide opt-in subscribers that you can market to in the future
  • Begin and/or continue a relationship that may result in a sale (depending on the blog)
  • Allow people to read your material offline
It's funny though, I looked at some of the top blogs out there and I couldn't find a link to a white paper that was easily attainable.

Do you think that adding white papers to your business blog is a good idea? I know that Better Business Blogging has an easy to find sign up for their free white papers. That seems to be successful. This is something that I might experiment with.

Update 11/19/2006: Check out the blog: Marketing Interactions. It's a great example of how blogs can use white papers.

Chad H.

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Friday, August 25, 2006

Thursday, August 24, 2006

New blog design for Anything Goes Marketing - what do you think?

Ok, it's been a few days since I launched my new blog design.

What do you think? Do you like this better then my old design?

I'm getting used to Blogger Beta but I still can't adjust the template myself - grrrr.


Chad H.
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Don't try to sell before a person is ready to buy

When is the best time to sell your products or services? Easy question - when they're ready to buy them!! Whether you have some products on e-Bay, your own e-commerce site or a B2B business with real sales people, it's much easier to sell when your prospect says "where do I sign" or clicks the checkout button.

I read a few articles that have clearly demonstrated this concept for B2B purchases. Marketing Sherpa has just published a case study in which Career Builder improved its conversion rate by adding a "learn more" button underneath the "buy now" button on its home page. It demonstrated that people don't want to be forced into buying something until they're ready. Makes sense eh?

Brian Carrol over on his blog wrote an article called "Using White Papers for Lead Generation" in which he claims that you shouldn't try and sell to people who just downloaded a white paper. Brian adds "don't pass white paper inquiries to your sales people until they're more rigorously qualified as sales-ready leads". These people for the most part are at the beginning of the purchase process where they've realized that your company can fulfill a need of theirs. Instead of having Joe Sales call them, either send them some additional information such as a webinar link or have someone who is a "trusted advisor" call them.

If you have business blog (which you should), you can even send them a link and encourage them to subscribe. This continues the conversation and can help you determine if this person is truly qualified. It can also help the purchaser decide if you are the company that they want to purchase from.

Bottom line - always have the option to further educate the potential buyer which gives you a better chance to convince them to buy your product when they're ready.

Chad H.

PS - The Marketing Sherpa case study is really more B2C. Take the advice from this case study into consideration for your own e-commerce sites.


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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Blogger Beta Reloaded - Have you upgraded? Don't bother

A simple little ^%$# stack overflow error I found on my blog when it's viewed in IE lead to me migrating my blog to Blogger Beta, a new template, a headache, 3 cups of coffee, 4 hours of sleep, and a pissed off wife. Holy crap what a waste of time! I want to get off this crappy platform already!

Here are some of my comments off the top as to why I hate Blogger Beta:
  • Bugs, bugs, bugs and more bugs. I could hardly do anything without hitting a roadblock as an error popped up on my screen. For example, you can't upload images yet. The system hangs. What the hell is this? Microsoft Windows? I was half expecting to see a blue screen of death or one that has the Google colours. This was nuts! This is not an open source product - it's Google!
  • Same crappy templates. I thought - hey, maybe I'll change up my template as they must have new ones - right? Wrong! Although they have some new drag and drop web 2.0 whiz-bang technology it's the same old crappy templates minus all of the adjustments that I had made which took hours and hours. This may end my blogging career.
  • NO TEMPLATE EDITING. Is this grade 2 and are you protecting me from the bad wolf? Why can't I edit the template??? I could not add in some of my custom code that I had and was forced to make crappy work-arounds. This is ridiculous. I don't care of this will be released soon. Don't offer the upgrade unless you have all the goods. I didn't see anywhere that this wouldn't be offered right away.
  • Adsense is no more. They removed their easy AdSense placement. While I never really took advantage of this, I tried to place the Adsense code myself on the sidebar but the special HTML/JavaScript sidebar feature had a bug in it. This made the least sense as it's in Google interest to make using AdSense easy. Hey I made $0.31 so far (that's American money by the way) and I want this thing to work.
  • Blog Title does not go to the home page. How can visitors get to my home page? I tried a few things with the title but nothing has worked. This really is a pain in the ass.
  • Categories. t's great that Blogger finally added categories and you can see I put them to good use below. However, the feature that is supposed to add them to the side of the page doesn't seem to be working. Surprise, surprise.
This was just a small bit of the problems I faced. I still don't have the ability to pre-publish my posts. Bottom line - Wordpress, here I come. I I refuse to be treated like a dumb user.

Was anyone else as warped as I was to try this out?

Chad

PS - Any feedback on the new template?
PPS - Yes, I know it's free by Google has a gazillion dollars and can do better.
PPPS - I did like the new spellcheck I must admit.

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Monday, August 21, 2006

Which day is best for B2B email?

B2B online reports that Monday and Tuesday are the best days for b2b (b-to-b) email marketing.

Which have been your most successful email days? Did you even measure this?

Chad H.

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My blog comment was labeled as spam

Has this ever happened to you? I wrote a simple response to a blog post on the blog, Nektros, and my comment was marked as spam and almost didn't get through.

Here is the comment I left:
Yvonne - awesome blog. I love being a troll. Check out my post on why Mel Gibson needs a blog.

Have you ever left any comments and wondered why they were never published?

Yvonne over at Nektros uses the anti-spam program called Akismet to monitor blog comment submissions. My simple comment in which I was responding to her post on 5 and a half reasons why Internet trolls are awesome almost got deleted (Yvonne did post my comment though after she found it in the spam trash can). This is a warning to everyone to watch as to how you comment because of new programs like Akismet.

I looked on Akismet's site and there is no definition as to how they determine what is comment spam so I emailed them and asked them what the hell that was about. I'll let you know what I find.

Chad H.

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

Maximize the e-mail unsubscribe

When your email subscribers fo the unthinkable (hey - you worked hard on that campaign) and hit the unsubscribe link do you let them off easy or is it a tearful goodbye?

A great article by Stefan Pollard at ClickZ recommends that when users do chose to opt-out of your emails there are some ideas in which you can save your opt-in or at least better understand why they are opting out:
  • On the opt-out page, have the option for the user fill out a simple form in which they can explain why they opted out. Perhaps you were sending too many emails or they weer no longer relevant to this person.
  • Have an email preference page in which the person can opt-out of say your webinar invites but still get your newsletter.
  • Have additional contact information - link to customer support, a 1-800 number
These simple and easy concepts can help you get the most out of the investment that you made to acheive the opt-in in the first place.

Chad H.

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Saturday, August 19, 2006

Email benchmark open and click-through rates

Looking for stats to benchmark your email open and click-through rates? Check out Emarketer's E-mail Benchmark rates. It's important to note that these are total opens and click-throughs and not unique click-throughs.

It's also significant to note that the study has found that behavioural targetting has led to a higher success rate. If you haven't started to do this, get your team together and look for tools that will automate your email marketing processes.

E-marketing keeps changing - make sure you're not left behind!

Chad H.

PS - This was run by Harte-Hanks so I'm not sure how credible the data is. Seems a bit high.

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Why Mel Gibson needs a blog - follow up

As a quick follow up to my post on Why Mel Gibson needs a blog, check out the new Mel Gibson T-shirts that are on sale. Mel - what are you waiting for? Get blogging.

Chad H.
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How to destroy your e-marketing presence in 5 steps

These days everyone has advice on how to improve your online presence for your business and generate leads through e-marketing strategies. What if you are having a bad week or day and are fed up with the ridiculous time involved in maintaining your website, low web traffic, rising costs of AdWords and failed conversion rates from your email campaigns? If you've had enough of e-marketing, here is what I recommend:

  • Simplify your website. You can simply take down your website but that would be too easy. I recommend just having one page as your home page with the following picture and a caption "Pick up the f%#^&@ phone and call us at 1-800-555-5555". At the bottom of the page (below the fold), make sure that you have a few paragraphs as to what your company does. You will need this for some of the search strategies below.

  • Send one last email blast. Email your entire database (including those that have unsubscribed) as well as any random email addresses that you find with the same picture above and the text "You have been unsubscribed from [YOUR COMPANY]. For more details, please go to www.yourcompany.com. You have been warned." Notice how we have used consistent branding between email and your website. Hey, if you're going to tank your e-marketing channels, make sure you use some best practices!

    As another best practice, you should test different subject lines to a subset of your list before sending out the complete email blast. For example, try these subject lines "Please confirm your unsubscription" or "This is the final email we are sending you". The "from" name of your email should always include the name of your company.

    As an added tip - don't really unsubscribe these people, you may need to send a follow up email. :) However, ensure that you allow people to really unsubscribe (we don't want to violate CAN-SPAM too much).

  • Paid search and ads blow out. If you have already setup Yahoo and Google paid search ads, change the caption so that instead of the typical text that would entice people to click on the ad, it reads "Why go to this website? It's not like you have in the past". Make sure that all links go to your home page. If you don't have any paid search ads, buy some and make sure that you have keywords that are related to the text on our home page (see above). Use the same caption.

    You can also purchase ads on industry related websites. If you have the chance to create a banner ad, use the same picture above and use the same caption.

  • The business blog to end all business blogs. If you were smart and started a business blog you can use this to help bring down your e-marketing strategy. Add one last post that says "Stop reading this blog and go to www.yourcompany.com". That was why we created this blog in the first place". If you don't have a business blog, don't bother starting one as it's not worth it if you don't plan on spending any more time or resources on your e-marketing strategy.

  • Monitor and adjust. While this strategy may do the job, you may need to tweak a few things to seal the deal. This may include sending out a follow up email that warns those that did open your last email that their houses will be bombed if they open any more emails from your company. Paid search ads may need to be changed to "Thanks for not clicking on this ad".
Do you think this will work? Did I miss anything?

Chad H.

PS - Besides having a product or service that people actually use and a good receptionist or sales team to answer the phone, this post assumes that your company has a good brand recognition and offline marketing presence so that people know who your company is and what they do. If this isn't the case, please refrain from the above. If you're e-marketing strategy isn't working, you may need to take a step back and either get some help, get some new tools or do both.

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Improving search rankings for blogs - Tip #2

I just received a huge boost in my traffic and wanted to let you know the reason why. In my first search rankings tip I discussed how you can adjust the TITLE tag of your blog to help improve the strength of your keywords. Today's tips is even more important.

Tip#2: Improve search rankings by getting links from authority web sites

I was recently featured on www.problogger.net which not only drove a large amount of traffic to my blog but also helped in my search rankings as Problogger is an authority website. Authority websites are those that are very popular and have a tremendous amount of traffic. The question is how to do this?

  • Simply ask for it. Do a search on Google for a topic that you're focusing on, see which popular sites come back, go to the site/blog and ask the site for a link to your blog. Sounds easy? Try it - there's no harm in asking.
  • Group projects. Watch out for sites that have collaborative projects in which you can contribute to. This is what I did and was linked to from Problogger. There are other sites as well such as Easton's Blogtipping idea which is great as it introduces bloggers to amazing new blogs.
  • Comment. Comment, comment, comment and write good comments. Let people know what you have written about and ensure that it's related to the post that you are commenting on.
These are just the beginning. Check out this post over at search engine workshops called Over 125 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies. That should give you some additional ideas.

For now, keep on writing good content and you will get the traffic. Remember: "If you build it, they will come".

Chad H.

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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Why B2B websites fail

B2B websites can fail for many reasons but one of the main reasons is due to the difficulty of accessing content. In an article that he wrote for Rain Today, Brian Carroll, an authority on how businesses can improve the lead generation process, sites evidence from Marketing Sherpa and the Nielsen Norman Group to outline why companies don't translate great web traffic into sales leads.

He believes that companies shouldn't place a web form in front of evry demo or whitepaper. Brian states:
You'll do better by thinking of lead generation as a process of micro-conversions that slowly build a prospect profile over time.
He suggests to start small and gather perhaps just an email address at first and build up the relationship between the prospect and company over time. This is what I have been recently advocating to my clients. If you have content that you know prospects would like to see, offer a few bits for free or with a minimal barrier. Let them munch on it and if they want more, then they can fill out a web form that has additional fields. At least they can see the value in the content that you provide before having to fill out a long form.

The same can be said for your PPC search campaigns.

If you have people that have found you from say Google or Yahoo, I would ask the least amount of information possible to access a key whitepaper when they first land on your site. Treat these people like new neighbours who are meeting the rest of the neighborhood for the first time. Greet them with a nice warm welcome the first time and invite them over for dinner for the next time. In terms of lead generation, get an email from their first interaction and then follow this up with an email that contains information or an offer that is directly related to what they came to your site about. On this follow up email, you can ask for additional information to see if the prospect is truly interested and qualified

Blogging is very similar.

Don't make people submit an email address if they don't want to when they comment on your blog. If prospects find your blog and like it, they will eventually submit their contact information. Notice how with RSS feeds, you don't need to submit any contact information. You can just sign up on your own.

Always keep in mind what your strategy is but also what is on the minds of your customers when you market to them.

Chad H.

Related posts:
Website Conversions - What are they good for?
Sealing the Deal: Your Landing Page

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Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Anything goes marketing using You Tube

UPDATED! Zeeker was nice enough to tell me that the video below was no longer available so I updated it with a new one.

This was the best and most fun tip of the week by Darren Conian over at Performancing. His suggestion is to go to YouTube and find a video that fits your blog.

Here is what I found (no, that isn't me singing):



This fits my blog as the song is "Anything Goes" and well my blog name is Anything Goes Marketing but I also liked the humour in this video and the pure craziness which reflects my blog posts. I'm try to mix in humour when I blog and you don't know what you're going to get. Thanks Darren! You made my day.

Have you tried searching on YouTube for a video that suits your blog?

Chad H

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Why Mel Gibson needs a blog

Lets face it, Mel Gibson is a big douche bag but like any Hollywood actor, he can lie through his teeth and build up his image once again. How can he and others do this? One way is through blogging. Just as businesses can use blogs to portray a human voice to their corporate facade, celebrities can also use blogs to have their say - especially when they screw up which is typical for them. Mel has a tremendous amount of money at stake as he really put his foot in his mouth with his latest antisemitic comments and it could cost him his position as an "A list" star as well as friends, fans and his supporters (he lost me a while back). Here are some practical blogging tips for you Mel about how you could use a blog to help "right the ship" on your quickly drowning career:
  • Issue a real apology using a blog post that you may have actually wrote (even though he probably wouldn't write it). Your statement does nothing for me. It's typical Hollywood bullshit. You sound like a 5 year old that is writing a 500 word essay to the principal to get out of detention. Write it from the heart - you owe it to your fans. This drivel you call an appology confirms that your a lying SOB antisemite.
  • Provide examples. Use a blog to demonstrates what you're doing to fix the mess you made. If you claim that you "acted like a person completely out of control" and "said things that I do not believe to be true" then show us that you're not full of it. Write posts about how this incident affected you or how you contributed money to a Jewish cause or any cause that helped ethnicities that you insulted. Look at other people like Russell Crowe who made a donation to a synagogue in Montreal after it was firebombed in a racially motivated act of hatred. That's a perfect way to use your blog. Imagine if you blogged about this Mel or a day to day account of how you are dealing with your alcoholism? You may even develop some sympathetic readers.
  • Let others have their say. A blog would give you the chance for people to leave comments of support or other comments... Celebrities have already been providing you with support but a blog would centralize all of this for you. If you're actually trying to clean up your act, a blog would allow your fans to express themselves. Of course, if you keep up your racial hatred, your blog may have some other types of comments.
  • Tell us about yourself. We all know that you are an antisemite and have done some piss movies but if you had a blog, we would know even more about you and your wonderful father. Seriously... I'm sure there's something that we may really want to know about you and your Australian childhood. Perhaps it's you collection of Nazi war memorabilia, your fantastic shot glass collection or a story of the affair that you had on the set of Mad Max. Whatever it is, it should help your reputation or at least make people forget about your drunken trades. Right now, you don't even have an official website. You the internet to your advantage and get yourself a blog.
  • Monitor the blogosphere. Use Technorati, Icerocket and BlogPulse to see what others (like myself) are saying about you and leave comments on their blog to show the world out there who you really are. Lead people back to your blog and turn them into faithful readers and fans.
Mel, you really are an ass but you have a chance to rebuild yourself and reestablish the great actor that you may never have been. With blogging, you may have that chance. Let me know how it goes.

Chad H.

PS - Blogs are really not much different for celebrities then for businesses. It's a crucial marketing channel that must be exploited along with the other marketing outlets such as TV, email, print, online etc.. I'll be writing about how other celebrities can use blogs to help them with their careers.




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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Why doesn't anyone respond to my blog comments?

Not sure? Check out Lorelle's post on How NOT to Comment on Comments. The unintelligent (ironic?) thing is that she actaully discusses how to comment rather then how not to comment. Becuase of this, I will write about how not to comment on blogs:
  • Before you comment, read the entire post. Don't be lazy. We hate laziness, yes we do.
  • Watch your @#$&* language for fuck sakes. This is a blog and not the playground.
  • Don't sign your name as someone that you're not. For example, I know that it's really not you Superman that left me a comment. But, if you would like to, please do and let me know when I can go flying with you.
  • Leave comments that are in the same language as the overall blog. You would think this one was obvious but it's not.
  • Don't comment about the blog author's mom. This never goes over very well but may make for a lively discussion but will lead to a short blogging career.
  • If it's not a political blog, don't bring politics into it. I don't want to hear about George Bush or the Hezbollah. If I want to see smut, I will turn on CNN
  • Respect the blog author. He/she could be with his wife right now or perhaps sleeping but has chosen to blog about something that is either really important or entertaining. He's doing this for you (mostly). Whichever, you must respect this and comment appropriately.
The bottom line is feel free to comment about whatever you like but make it entertaining and informative. While I don't recommend blogging about people's moms, try something different and see what happens. That's what blogging is all about.

Make blog, not war, and blog with passion. always.

Chad H.

PS - Lorelle, I left you a comment that you were a little strict. I really meant it. For example:
  • DO NOT LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE COMMENT. If you want a response via private email, just enter it in the form but not in the comment itself so the world can see it.
  • DO NOT PUT YOUR PHONE NUMBER OR ADDRESS IN THE COMMENT.
  • DO NOT PUT PERSONAL AND PRIVATE INFORMATION IN YOUR COMMENT. Personally, I will edit it out.
Calmn down - you can do it.

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Out of office marketing

Great article by Karen Gedney over at ClickZ regarding ways to market yourself using your Outlook (or other email client) "out of office" feature by including a link to a blog that you may be updating on the road, a conference you may be attending, a product release you are working towards, some information regarding where you are etc...

It's just another reminder that anything goes when it comes to marketing yourself and your company. Thanks Karen! I am already planning my message for a planned day off on Monday.

Chad H.

PS - I will be visiting my new niece in New Jersey this weekend - can't wait!

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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Tips on commenting using coComment - Part 1

If you're a smart blogger (which I'm not saying I am), you've probably found out about a great tool called coComment that lets you keep track of comments you've left on other blogs. This post is not about how to use this or the benefits of coComment - you already should know this. This post is about being a better coCommenter!

Commenting on a popular blog like Problogger.net or Direct2Dell may be very helpful in establishing yourself as as a legitimate blogger. However, popular blog authors, contributors and administrators are extremely busy these days and receive hundreds of comments weekly. They don't have time to review all the comments they receive and if they can't see your comment or if it looks like it may not be adding value, it may be ignored. Hey, it happens these days and it will happen more and more as the number of bloggers out there is growing by the second. How can you make sure your comment is seen in coComment?

  • Don't add any line breaks in you comments right away. An example of a good comment: "Chad - I agree with your point but I think that you...."
    An example of a bad comment:
    Chad,
    I agree with your point but hemorrhoids should not be used for paperweights

    As you can see from the image below from coComment a blog author may skip over a comment that has something like "Dave" and then a line break. Make sure that blog authors can easily see your comment

    coComment






  • That first line of your comment should be meaningful. Don't waste time - get right into what you want to say. If it isn't right to the point then the blog author may skip right over it and so will everyone else reading your comments using coComment.

    From the image below, the comment by Ed "I think that once a day is a good equalibrium. At a stretch, one should look to write something" is much more effective then the other comments listed.






  • Use cliffhangers. Try writing a comment that will want them to read on. For example: I agree with what you're saying about hemorrhoids but you missed an important point....
    You forgot to mention how much it will cost to have them removed!
    In coComment, the blog author and all the other blog commenters would only see the first line which would probably entice them to click on your comment to read more.
Keep these tips in mind for your next comments you leave as the blogging pros out there use coComment and don't have time to deal with comments that don't seem relevant. The better the comment the more your blog will get noticed.

If you are a user of coComment, do you think these tips are accurate? Any additional tips?

Chad H.

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A Simply Terrible Campaign

What would you consider to be your perfect online campaign? Pete Lerma over at ClickZ can't seem to get enough of himself and his campaign called SimplyPerfect.com

Peter boasts about this "exciting" campaign that "allows visitors to post text, audio, and video messages to weigh in on the question, 'What is perfection?'". My response is simply: not this site, not by a longshot. I found this website simply impossible to use at first and by the time I found out what it did I didn't care. Most web surfers would have left long before that time in any case.

When I go to the webpage it asks me to enter my year of birth. What is the point? I entered 1233 which means I'm almost 800 years old (crap, where have the years gone?). What teenager dosn't realize that they need to be over 21 - why bother, really?

I then get into the site and I have no idea what to do. There are no instructions on what you should be doing on this site, no help features or an explanation of what the point of this site is. Even Pete admits that it has "less-than-typical (but, we hope, intuitional) navigation cues". Sorry - it just didn't cut it. Here are just a few of my complaints:
  • The debate boxes and bottles are so small that you can't read them unless you scroll over them.
  • If you able to figure out that you need to click on the boxes that say something like "The Comic, The Movie" this will actually disable the rest of the bottom navigation. If you clicked on these boxes by mistake, then you'll probably be even more confused.
  • Voting - this took a while for me to get. Why not have a subtitle underneath "Perfection is Debatble" like "Vote for your version of perfection". I still missed what the debate has to do with "Simply perfect" and alcohol. To help the user out, I would have added a most popular debate, most recently added debate or best audio or video submitted.
All that work that your team did I think was a waste. It was a good idea and may win some awards and some guest speaking spots but good luck getting any real conversions that will result in sales.

Chad H.

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Monday, August 07, 2006

Improving search rankings for blogs - Tip #1

As I find interesting ways to improve search engine optimization for your blogs, I will pass these tips on. I've written a few posts on how to easily improve your search rankings and SEO. I'll keep these short and sweet:

Tip#1: Improve search rankings by moving your blog name to the end of your post's Title Tag.

Mark White over at Better Business Blogging explains:
Because you only have a certain number of words which Search Engines register in the Title Tag (generally accepted as between 8 and 10 words) and because more weight is given to those appearing earlier in the phrase, it is beneficial to change this default format. If possible, have the Title of the Post first followed by the name of the Blog, thus giving the keywords in your Title additional weight.

Therefore, my title tags will change between "Anything Goes Marketing - Improving search rankings for blogs - Tip #1" to "Improving search rankings for blogs - Tip #1 - Anything Goes Marketing". We'll see what this little change will do for my blog by checking my web referrals. I'll let you know.

I also found the code to do this for Blogger on Tech.Life.Blogged. Thanks again!

Is it really worth it to make this change? Has anyone seen any effect?

Chad H.

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Thursday, August 03, 2006

Feed icon library

Now for something completely different...

Looking at my blog, I said to myself "how can I increase my subscriptions?". Besides the obvious "provide posts that are actually good", I thought I would fix up the right side of my blog and make it easier to subscribe. I then found myself looking at a number of feed icons which have become the new standard to identify syndicated content.

In order to help you spice up your blog, I've searched long and far for some of the different feed icons out there and created a library for everyone to use. Feel free to let me know of an icon that should be added to this list. Enjoy!

Large Feed Icons



















Small Feed Icons





Hope you had fun!

Chad H.




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