Devour The Web

Loomia managed an impressive content trifecta of content providers that signed on with the launch of its SeenThis? application today. The Wall Street Journal Online, NBC Universal, and CNET Networks have all agreed to provide links to their content that will allow viewers to then share it with friends over “a leading social network” i.e. Facebook.

Using SeenThis?, Wall Street Journal online readers can opt-in to the application and let their friends know what they’ve been reading at the site. CNet is doing the same with its BNET, ZDNet, and TechRepublic sites, while NBC Universal will allow provide links to videos and shows.

Facebook ran into problems when it tried to launch a similar system for sharing ads called Beacon, which it then retreated from after a good deal of blowback about the lack of clear opt-out procedure and privacy concerns. SeenThis? will probably avoid such concerns considering it’s stressing the opt-in component necessary to use the application, and lets face it, how often have you found yourself sending friends a link to an article or video with the caption “you’ve got to see this!” Loomia is apparently trying to save readers some extra steps.

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Online advertising is necessary for your computer business to grow. An attention-grabbing ad is very important to the success of your web site. An ad written to draw visits to your site must be exciting, appealing, and friendly. The secret to a successful ad is to grab your target market’s attention. Potential customers read ads only when they catch their attention. Plan your online advertising around your ad’s appeal to your customers.

The purpose of online advertising is to create a sense of urgency. "Act Now!" "Increase Your Wealth!" "Limited Offer." All these phases cause the customer to want to get in on the excitement. Online advertising’s main goal is to get your subject’s attention, arouse their interest, and capture their imagination. If you write your own ads, make sure to make them attention grabbing, not too overboard. Sometimes ads that push a customer too hard result in lost sales. Don’t be too pushy but yet ask for the sale.

When writing online advertising always remember you have just seconds to capture interest. If your ad copy moves slowly or sounds boring, you will likely lose the customer’s attention and surely they will click onto another site. The headline of your ad is the first place that can provide impact. An effective headline will make the reader want to learn more about your product or service. Spice them up and appeal to their emotions.

Seth Godin recently wrote about the concept of digital coaching, and how there seems to be a shortage of people operating in this manner online. And there’s no doubt that this is a huge growth area for online training and coaching concepts.

How do I know? Because it’s one of the seven business models we’ve already explored inside Teaching Sells.

Here’s a really meaty article that explains how it works.

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

Guest Post By Michel Fortin

Some people have asked me to give a few tips and tricks they can start using right away to apply some of the strategies I wrote about in my “Death of the Salesletter” report, without resorting to audio or video.

Aside from the various technology you can start applying to make your sales experience more dynamic, there are some very simple things you can do to your salesletter, right now, to improve its readership. And ultimately, its response.

It’s easy, it’s fast, and it’s proven to increase results.

It’s adding pictures, photos, clipart, and content-relevant graphics to your salesletters. Particularly, one near the top, around the headline.

Headlines are critical. In fact, it’s part of the most important element of any salesletter: the “A” in the AIDA formula, which is to grab people’s attention, and to get them to start reading.

If you don’t get people to start reading your copy, it doesn’t matter how good your copy is. They just won’t buy.

Better headlines have been proven to increase readership and response by as much as 700% in my own split-tests. But adding photos and graphics near the headline have equally boosted response as well, sometimes even more.

The second say of AlwaysOn OnMedia in New York started with a panel about monetizing Internet video technology. CEOs and senior level executives from Move Networks, Brightcove, and ImageSpan talked about the role of video, geotargeting, and targeting to certain demographics. Though they touched on metrics, they didn’t talk about the finite measurement of consumer behavior while watching video.

Meanwhile, at DEMO this week Visible Measures left stealth mode with VisibleSuite. A measurement product that looks at the interaction a user has with video. VideoSuite measures in-stream viewing behavior such as when a user abandons the stream as the first ad plays or rewinds to view a particular frame in the video.

Visible Measures founder and CEO Brian Shin’s goal is to promote growth of video with better metrics. “Internet video is important, we all love it, we went to make it more monetizable, more effective for the advertiser and publisher, without hindering the user experience.”

Publishers can use the data to find out what’s effective in video and what segments make interesting clips from longer videos based on what parts are being rewatched. Advertisers can gain similar data by determining how much time was spent engaging with the brand, and tweaking creative.

At an otherwise lackuster panel on CMO strategies at OnMedia NYC, former Reebok CMO Roger Wood just made an interesting point:

No major companies to date have had a CMO whose professional background is digital rather than traditional.

When’s that going to change?

The post is by Sean D’Souza

Writing headlines for articles is like witchcraft.

You have to know the spells, and chant before you can create awesome headlines, right?

Nah!

What you really need is a factor of new.

And also a bit of knew.

So what do I mean by new and knew?

New is kinda obvious. If you have something new in the headline, then the reader is instantly interested.

The curiosity trigger is launched, and the reader wants to know what’s next. But if your entire headline had a factor of new you’ll cause anxiety, not curiosity.

So let’s look at a few examples to see what I mean. Let’s go back into the last century to the year 1999.

And being that it’s 1999, you’ve heard nothing about the iPod. Or podcasts. Or RSS.

And your headline read: How to Create RSS Podcasts with the iPod.

Aha, it’s all new information if you’re still stuck in 1999, right?

So why did it cause your brain to go waka-waka?

Because it’s all so new. And running into all new is like running into an InDesign Toolbar with five-hundred palettes.

Free Gifts
 by: J Square Humboldt

Gift-giving is a year-around enterprise these days, so allow me to do a favor to your wallet whilst assisting you with the spirit of giving …

Cyberspace is loaded with free items that can even make opening Christmas cards a pleasant surprise. It won’t cost you anything, for example, to postscript your greeting with a URL that leads to something enjoyably free.

If you know someone who likes games, there are five sites you might want to share:

1. GameDept.com features a number of free online games, from actionware to puzzles. The list is often updated and includes a rating system that is quite useful in making selections.

2. PlayerPlaza.com allows the stakes to be raised, if so desired. Not only do they have free games that allow for online competition, they also include the option of playing for money. This is a site for the pro who really thinks they’re a pro.

3. Mindgames is for the Mensa candidates. Its menu is composed mostly of card, board and word games that, to quote them, are ‘an eclectic collection … to challenge the mind.’

In Google AdWords, the advertisers’ links show up when someone types a certain keyword to Google search engine’s box and enters it. The links will show up on the right hand side of the results page.

In Google AdSense, the advertisers’ links show up on the third party’s page if the rich content of the page is relevant to those ads. In a rich-content website on Internet Marketing, the ads that appear are related to Internet Marketing.

If your rich-content site is about “making money online” and you sign up for Google AdSense, then Google will decide that the proper ads for your page are about “making money opportunity”.

To make the right decision which ads should be shown on the third party’s web pages, Google applies its Page Ranking technology, which is called content-targeting.

The third party will earn shares with Google everytime visitors click on the ads.

So, if you have a rich content site, signing up for Google AdSense could be fun. If you are accepted by Google (yes, many sites are rejected by Google!), you will be given a code. All you have to do is just paste the code to your HTML page, you decide the location and settings.