Twitter Launches @Anywhere Service

At the latest South by Southwest, Evan Williams, CEO and co-founder of Twitter, revealed the newest thing to hit the micro blogging world – the @anywhere service. The new service aims allow native Twitter support on webpage to enable users to interact with Twitter without leaving the website.

The new app platform announced by Williams will integrate the service with the rest of the web. A simple script will enable web developers to provide hover cards similar to the ones found on Twitter.com to pop up on their own sites. This will allow users to utilize the links found on the hover cards and either Tweet about the site, follow the author of an article, etc. Of these, the crucial development seems to be the ability to follow the author of an article, as this would give you a legitimate link to the person you wish to follow. Currently, the legitimacy of a person’s identity is one of the biggest issues in following people. It also enables everyone to know the Twitter handle of a particular person.

With people Tweeting what they are reading about or purchasing, the data set gathered by Twitter becomes extensive. Therefore, integrating it further into the web will only make Twitter’s stock grow. Anyone buying data from the company will have access to a very personal and in-depth profile of a person. How Twitter goes about monetizing this scheme is still unknown. So far, the company has not revealed any plans to generate revenue, a move that is anxiously awaited by the tech community.

Google Supports Digital Due Process

Google announced today a new coalition with privacy groups, technology companies and academics designed to update the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which governs how law enforcement can access electronic information.

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Google Supports Digital Due Process

A Short Term Strategy

When you are starting out on your internet marketing venture, it may be confusing to try to comprehend all the strategies and methods that everyone is using. Instead of trying to take it all in all at once, just try one marketing strategy first and do it properly.

Sometimes you just have to try out something to see if it works for you and in this case, using a short term strategy can help you figure out a lot of things. One of the best strategies to use would be pay-per-click advertising (PPC). PPC is simple and easy to set up; all you have to do is get an account, figure out your keywords and create your ads. Currently Google Adwords and Yahoo! Overture are the best platforms out there.

Adwords can be set to display your ads on search results or content. An important point to note is that Google supplies search results to AOL and other sites as well. This means that when you set Adwords to display results only on “searches”, your ad will appear on all the sites Google supplies results to. Starting off with the “searches” option is better, as the other option will require a little bit of experience to make it work. Overture is also quite good and one of the advantages it holds over Adwords is that the size of the ads is a little bigger.

The reason why PPC advertising is a good short term strategy is that it brings you traffic immediately, it allows you to gauge how your site is performing and if it isn’t performing very well, it allows you to tweak your site and get quick feedback.

A Long Term Strategy

Once you have a short term strategy like PPC working well for you, it is time to start thinking about a long term strategy. Long term strategies help you cement your place in the online world. One such proven and highly competitive strategy is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In its barest form, SEO can be described as a method that will display your site in search results on MSN, Yahoo! and of course, Google. The significant fact is that this method aims to get your site to the top of the search results. It can be argued that the same thing can be achieved by getting a paid ad, but the whole point of SEO is that it is free and requires only your time as an investment.

The fruit of your labor will take some time to appear under this method, sometimes even taking up to a couple of years, which is why this is known as a long term strategy. But once you get it working properly, it will bring in traffic to your site in droves. Think about the revenue you could make if you had a million unique hits every month and ten percent of those converted into sales. Even with a meager profit of $1 per person, that would still be a hefty sum.

There are a few key steps you should consider when getting into SEO. Identify keywords and select the ones that have the most traffic. Then you should set up your site so that the meta-tags and the content have those keywords in them. Next, you have to keep adding content to your site on a very regular basis. Finally, trade links with websites that have content that relates to yours.

Remember, SEO is a long term strategy so you have to be very patient until it starts showing results.

Tips for Product Review Blogs

Product review blogs require a bit of work to become effective, but once you get it going it can be quite lucrative. The most important thing to remember is that the success of the product review blogs is built on its reputation.

Your reviews must be written impartially and must be of high quality. You should buy and use the product if possible to give a real, first-hand experience of it. While you experiment with the product, try to capture it on video. It does not matter if you make mistakes while using the product, just try and capture every moment. Later on, you can edit this video and place it alongside your product review. Not only does this add an extra dimension to your review, it also helps build visitors’ confidence in you as they can see you actually using the product. If you are not able to utilize the video, you should include some pictures on how to use the product. This will also go towards building your reputation, especially if you give help with tricky bits of installation that the product manual does not.

You should always respond to comments left by visitors to the site. This will help you build up a relationship with them and increase your returning visitors. The more you build up your reputation in this way the more traffic you will see coming to your website. As you build up your site and see the traffic flowing in, do not forget to add your affiliate links to the product. After all, making money is the whole purpose of this exercise.

Avoiding Outsourcing Mistakes

Internet marketing can start off as a one-man-job, but you will soon find yourself swamped with a million things to do. If you do find yourself in this situation, a good solution can be outsourcing.

Outsourcing can be anything from website design to ghostwriting to customer service. In short, anything you don’t have time for and someone else does, can be termed outsourcing. However, you cannot blindly outsource your work. To ensure that you receive quality work there are some things you must keep in mind.

Review your supplier/agency as well as you can. More often than not they will not be in the same state or country. This means a lot of online research as well as inspecting samples of their work. Contacting their referrals and talking to them will also help.

Work out a budget and stick to it. Do not be tempted to go for bundle offers which contain services you do not require. Also keep in mind that expensive suppliers are not necessarily the best.

Weigh the pros and cons of a onetime fee versus a monthly retainer. This usually depends on the volume of work.

Always specify deadlines. In addition to this, be very specific on deliverables and payment based on those deliverables.

Have a clear outline of what you expect as an end product. This will avoid a bad end product/ service which will hurt your online reputation.

Have clear communication lines. You need to build up a relationship, convey your requirements and receive feedback.

Make some smart decisions and you will soon find yourself with a lot more free time to devote towards developing other aspects of your business.

Search Engine Optimization – Three Mistakes You Should Avoid

The importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is only too obvious when it comes to having an online business. While everything that can be done is being done to make a website SEO-friendly, a lot of people make certain common mistakes in the process, which are avoidable.

1. Lack of content – There are many sites out there that look very rich due to the videos and pictures that compliment the product. However, the textual content is woefully sub-par. The same is true for all other products on the site. This is a bad mistake to make in terms of SEO. This is not a condemnation of the page but simply means that to a search engine all the product pages look the same because of a lack of textual content. Therefore, the search engine will most likely ignore them or classify them as low quality. Make sure that you have a decent amount of content which is significantly different in each page.

2. Drop anchors – Use your Anchor Text smartly. The more you help a search engine know what is being linked, the better your ranking will be in searches. For example in “Website design by Creative Designers”, the link should not be Creative Designers but Website design.

3. Spare a thought for crawlers – Unless you really have to display designs using flash, it is best to use this component and other components like it to a low minimum. Search engine crawlers like links on your page, especially site maps.
The point that is being emphasized here is “help the search engine recognize you”. The more you help a search engine identify you and assess you, the better your chances are of appearing at the top of the list based on a keyword search.

For more tips on SEO, visit WM SEO and also Submit Express Search Engine Forums.

Landing Page Optimization Tips

A well structured landing page is an essential item in online sales. There are many common mistakes that people make which can be avoided. The following are a few tips that can help you improve your landing page.

1. Avoid the home page – Do not direct your links to your home page. You do not want the customer to navigate through all the links on the home page to get to the product page they need to get to.

2. Avoid a generic page – Following on from the point above, do not have a general landing page. Always have a specific landing page for each specific product. Your potential customer is there because they want a specific product, so don’t lose their attention.

3. Optimize clarity – Structure the page; have information pertinent only to the product that is supposed to be on the page.

4. PPC to landing page – Try to have a pay-per-click ad that directly links to your landing page. This will help you form an instant connection with your customers.

5. Grab info slowly – Customers will not be willing to share everything you need to know about them in one go. Get little chunks of information out of them, one at a time.

6. Lose the clutter – Don’t load the page with lots of images. You can lose customers if they have to wait for the page to load.

7. Don’t sell again – If your customer is at the landing page, you have already done most of the selling. What you do from here has to be subtle. Give them plenty of information about the product because that is what they are looking for at that point. Do not try to hard sell here or you will drive them away.

For more tips on SEO we also recommend WM SEO Blog and Submit Express Search Engine Forums.

Microsoft Bang? It Almost Happened…

How close did Microsoft come to a major naming mistake with its most recent search engine? Pretty close, according to a CNET interview with Microsoft chief marketing strategist David Webster. According to Webster, Bing was not the first choice for a name for the company’s new search engine but something very close: Microsoft Bang.

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Microsoft Bang? It Almost Happened…

Microsoft Announces Upgrades to Bing

Microsoft announced today that it has made changes to its Bing search engine that it claims will help it deliver more accurate, detailed information about topics such as cars and sports. According to PC Magazine, Bing will debut a new automotive “domain task page” that includes deep information on different makes and models.

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Microsoft Announces Upgrades to Bing

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