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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
CEOs Who Use Twitter: Peter Bordes, MediaTrust CEO - BusinessWeek
CEOs Who Use Twitter: Peter Bordes, MediaTrust CEO - BusinessWeek
Peter Bordes, MediaTrust CEO
Following: 3,611Followers: 3,347
Updates: 1,638
Favorite Twitter user to follow:
@leeodden (http://twitter.com/leeodden), an online marketing and social media thought leader
How Twitter helps him run MediaTrust:
Twitter allows me to have a real-time two-way dialogue with MediaTrust's industry, community, business partners, and employees.
Recent tweet:
"Sourcing Data from Co-Registration Sites is Like Dealing in Sub-Prime Mortgages:Proceed at your own Risk"
View tweets: http://twitter.com/mediatrustpete
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
AffiliateMarketer.info » 70 Free Landing Page Templates
Free landing page templates aren’t easy to come by but we’ve gathered up some that were free and posted them here for you.
Here’s what google considers a “high quality” landing page and this will tell you what Wikipedia says.
Search Marketing Landing Page Template
Zanox offers up their landing page template for a free download of what they use for their search engine marketing.
Clean Landing Page Templates
Cash Revelations has FIFTY FOUR templates you can choose from in their single download. They even have a cool template viewer when you open the zip called openthis.html or you can browse through the folders. Many are similar with background changes only but well worth a look:
Revvenue Free Landing Page Templates
Revvenue has one download that includes TEN free templates to download in one zip file. You might need your graphics editor to change the graphics if you need to but this site has the best bang for the buck Here are three screen grabs of their free landing page templates:
Zac Johnson Free Landing Page Templates
Zac’s First Landing Page Template was pretty popular and well worth the download.
Zac also has a comparison or review landing page template that is pretty cool also.
Sales Page Landing Pages
Sales Page Landing pages are cool if you need a bit more space to write your offer and fall more into the category for ebook landing pages. We downloaded a couple and they worked well and were easy to update. Three free templates here. 1 example shown.
Text And Boxes Free Landing Page
Dotcomprenuer - Basic and real easy to edit.
Credit Report Landing Page
ThinkLikeAnSob was pissed at his designer so he posted a free download of a credit report template.
Know of any other free landing page templates? Leave a comment with the details.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
The FASTForward Blog » The FASTforward Blog Guide to Twitter: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary
The FASTforward Blog Guide to Twitter
Over the last three years, the members of the Fast Forward Blog have been writing regularly on the developing 2.0 world. If you been tracking the blog since early on, or diligently follow all the links into the archives, or even search for an item of interest - you hopefully have founds lots of interesting ideas and insights that helped you track and understand the emergence of enterprise 2.0, social media, and more. And yet it can still be hard to get the full value of all the insights that have been discussed or pointed to from here without some overarching narrative thread.
Hence the idea for these guides to see if we can aggregate, edit and make more accessible the collective “wisdom” that has been published here over the years. Our hope: that one of us can approach a topic and do our best to extract the most value from it for you.
Where to begin? Many think that Twitter is a great place to start as it embodies nearly all the lessons that we have to learn to become adept in this new world. It is also very simple and easy to adopt with a great many immediate benefits.
So, with that, the first of our guides: The Fast Forward Blog Guide to Twitter.
WordPress Plugins | alexking.org
Please note: All of these plugins are officially unsupported. They worked for me on the version of WordPress I wrote them for. If you have any trouble with them, please post in the WordPress Support Forums where many nice people will be able to help you.
If you were unable to find the help you needed in the WP forums, my company does provide WordPress consulting services - feel free to let us know what you need and we can send you an estimate. Thanks for understanding.
The latest version, sometimes including unreleased changes and bug fixes, can always be found in the SVN Repository for each plugin.
Read about WordPress 2.5 Compatibility for these plugins."
Friday, May 08, 2009
212 - About - About 212 Home
Saturday, May 02, 2009
A collection and rating of Twitter apps and tools | Yu-kai Chou
(Note: this is a compilation of a few other posts I made. My readers wanted all the apps in one post so they can easily come back to for reference)
I figured that, since am now an official Twitter Consultant and have gotten paid to research over tons of Twitter Apps, I might as well share my list with my readers. Its somewhat brief, but since there are so many I do not want to type out an elaborated report for each of them. I also didn’t include ALL the Apps I tried. I mainly put in the ones that are good because I don’t want to overload you with information. Having a list of 400 Apps doesn’t help your browsing pleasure.
I also thought a rating would be very helpful because people are not interested in knowing all the apps out there. They are interested in which one they should use. With that said, I included some of the apps that are somewhat popular but I think is pretty bad or ones that are just plain out amusing. For a more comprehensive list of Twitter Apps (but without the ratings), check out airabongco’s Squidoo Lenz. Enjoy!
Searching for People To Follow
Twits like Me (Find out people like you): Not particularly good. Couldn’t find relevant people to me. 3/10
Twellow (A Twitter directory sorted by occupation): Excellent. Fast, gets the people you want ranked by followers, and shows all relevant data. 9/10
Just Tweet It (A twitter directory sorted by interest): Decent. A bit unfriendly. 7/10
Twubble (Automatically finds people who are compatible with your interests): Quite good. Fast and easy. Shows you who do people you respect follow. Doesn’t tell you details of person though. 7/10
Mr Tweet (Finds worthy followers that you are not following, and influences beyond your network): Excellent. Like Twubble but better and shows more info, including Tweet Frequency, Ratio, and Behavior(!). 9/10
Twittie Me (Creates a twitter ad for you on front page and allows you to find others): Not that good. Hassle to use. 3/10
Twitdir (Search for words in usernames, locations or descriptions): Quite complete. VERY slow. Average. 6/10
Twitter Grader Search (Search for top Tweeters with certain keywords): Excellent too. Fast
and shows you the top Tweeters regarding each topic. Limited to top people. 8/10
TwitStat (looks at your tweeting behavior): Interesting App, as it can find the “most social” “happiest” “most tired” “most responded” people in the last 14 days. The interface is not very well built, and you can’t really get much of the info of the people. Interesting but not that great. 6/10
Discovering Worthy Topics and News
Topics by Search:
Twitter Search (Search for the latest trends on Twitter): Most basic. Difficult access, but fast and MOST up to date. Also updates real time. 8/10
Flaptor Search (A search tool that can be installed on your browser): OK. Lessup-to-date. Fast. Nice going with browser. Unnecessary if you have TweetDeck. 7/10
Tweet Scan (Search keywords and people on Twitter): Very Slow. Doesn’t find relevant info. Not very up to date. Pretty bad. 3/10
Twitterment (Search Twitter users and topics): Fast but just does a Google search relating to Twitter. Pretty useless. 2/10
TweetDeck Search (Desktop App that also has Search Functions): TweetDeck is one of the most amazing Twitter Apps because it makes almost all your Twitter activities easier and faster. After the DL, its search is easy to access and updates real time. Highly Recommended. 9/10
Topics by Type
Tweetmeme (find out the latest Stories on Twitter by type of file): Well designed, very inviting, good topics, you can choose what type of files you like (image, video, audio etc etc). One problem is lack of info on how its compiled. 7/10
Topics by Hype
Twitturly (Find out the most talked about stories on Twitter based on Links): Good info. Nicely done. Does not show the content very well. 8/10
Twitscoop (A search tool that tracks trends as well as certain events): Well made. Tag Cloud finally put in good use. Easy to browse, easy to access and very up to date. Chosen by Tweetdeck. 9/10
Tweet
Favotter (Find out the most favored tweets): This idea is very good . Fewer tweets get favorited than RTed, so it must be quality stuff. Not much news but some witty lines. Helps you be a better Tweeter. 8/10
Topics by Special Interest
Twistori (Find out what tweeter’s loves, hates, believes, etc.): This is awesome. It lets you understand the world better and connect with people better. However, it does not link to the actual tweeters. A big disappointment. 8/10
GoodBadMe (Keep track of the good and bad on the twitterverse): Interesting idea, but not very well executed. Hard to read tweets, and not very engaging. One of those sites that are fun to know about but wouldn’t really use often. 4/10
Analyzing Twitter Stats
Twinfluence (Measure your Twitter influence through tweets, reach of followers as well as second-order followers): This tool is really good. It is a sophisticated way of measuring how influential you are on Twitter. 9/10
Twitter-Friends (analyzes a whole set of data, especially focusong on how “sticky” you are, as
well as inactive friends or those who are online now): This App seems to have a lot of great features and interesting stats. It brings up a lot of interesting information and quotients about a user. It mostly
focuses on how “social” a user is, instead of how many followers he has. Slightly overboard but quite awesome. 8/10
Twitter Ratio (Find out your friend to follower ratio): I don’t find this one that great. Its just simple math: followers/followings. Yea, maybe you won’t know the EXACT number in 2 seconds, but who needs to know? It adds a little humor to the site though. 3/10
Twitter Counter (Allows you to see your follower growth): This is pretty useful to see if you have been getting more followers than you lose. You can also check out the growth history of friends. 8/10
Twitter Grader (find out your twitter grade. Computed based on how complete your profile is as well as the number and influence of your followers.): I don’t necessarily find the Grader that great. It does factor in some interesting things like how complete is your profile, tweeting behavior and follower influence, but overall it is somewhat dull because it doesn’t show you anything besides a number. Nice interface though. 6/10
Tweet Stats (Graph your tweet activity): This is probably the best tool to measure how you waste your time on Twitter. It not only tells you how often you tweet, it tells you when you usually tweet, on what device. 8/10
Twit Graph (Graph your tweeting activity): This is OK. Has potential, but can’t compare to Tweet Stats. The information is not particularly useful either. 5/10
TwiTemperature(Measures how “hot” are you by comparing you to what others are tweeting about): I find this somewhat meaningless. If you are saying what everyone else is saying, you are hot. If you can come up with original things to say, you are freezing. The humor and image makes a good laugh though. 4/10
Desktop/Mobile Apps (Will only cover the best ones)
Tweetdeck (Allows all twitter functions, search, groups, twitscoop): This is the most powerful Desktop App up to this point. It allows you to have a real-time keyword timeline, twitscoop, 12seconds.tv, and all that good stuff. The only problem is that it takes out the entire screen. 9/10
DestroyTwitter (Desktop AdobeAir App that allows all twitter functions): DestroyTwitter has been getting a lot of hype lately. However, I think it is subpar. The advantage is that it takes a lot less RAM than Tweetdeck. However, it does allow multiple tweetstreams, as well as groups. Also, the interface looks nice but is not as usable. There’s a lot of unnecessary mouse movements and clicks here. Constant updates can be nice or annoying. 6/10
Twitterfon (Allows people to use Twitter on the iPhone, including search): This is the best FREE iPhone app. The user interface is awesome, easy to use. You can look at anyone you want and see your conversations. 8/10
Tweetie (Allows people to use Twitter on the iPhone, including handling multiple accounts, inline web browsing, Geotagging and searching). This is by far the BEST iPhone Twitter App. It has all the functions you would dream of, and people rave about it all the time. The only problem is that it costs $3, but most think its worth it. 10/10
Managing your Friends/Followers
Tweet Wheel (See which of your followers are following each other): This is a decent tool that’s pretty and interesting. However, the outcome can be kinda confusing and it is REALLY REALLY slow. 5/10
Twitter Karma (Find out who is following and unfollowing you. Have a mass follow and unfollow tool): This tool is awesome. It allows you to trim your following list fast by who is not following you, or who never updates their tweets. The only problem is that it does not allow to sort by followers. 9/10
Qwitter (Get notified whenever someone unfollows you and shows you the last tweet): This is OK but not really THAT useful. It makes you feel down whenever there’s a separate email telling you you lost someone, even though you may have gained 5x more followers that day. Somtimes its late too. 6/10
Socialtoo (Notifies you of who unfollows you and has an unfollow back and auto-DM option): This is kinda like Qwitter but much better. First it sends all your follow/unfollow stats together in one email so its not as upsetting when you get the email. It also allows you to message people who follow you and unfollow people who unfollow you. 8/10
Powering up your Tweets
TweetDeck (Desktop App that allows you to do almost everything on Twitter): Again I praise Tweetdeck. Although the tweeting feature is not as powerful as the others (scheduled tweets, auto-follow), the stream of friend and search tweets makes it VERY easy to reply, DM, or RT anything. You can also upload an image with Twitpic, shorten your tweets by abbreviation, your own selection of URL shorteners. The biggest weakness is that it doesn’t help you manage multiple accounts. 9/10
HootSuite (Helps you manage multiple accounts, Schedule Tweets, Auto-follow, DM all followers and tracks the analytics for the shrunk links): Hootsuite is a superb web application that helps you handle multiple Twitter Accounts. I use this to manage my clients’ accounts and it works very well. The cool thing is that it automatically tracks the traffic for the shrunken links, so you can see how effective are your tweets. The only thing that truly annoys me is that their shrunken links have an annoying promotion bar on top, which would affect follower experience. 9/10
SocialToo (Helps you automate your Twitter experience, including Auto-follow, auto-unfollow, auto-DM new followers, and create surveys): for an automator, SocialToo is pretty cool. It has a clean interface and is very simple to use. It allows you to unfollow all the people who secretly unfollow you as well as auto-block auto-DMs from other SocialTooers. Finally, it allows you to create surveys for followers. Quite limited in tweeting but good other than that. 8/10
Tweetlater (Scheduled tweets. Automated follow and DM new followers. Handle multiple accounts. Keyword alert): Tweetlater is a pretty decent system. Its not as friendly as SocialToo and the user-interface is actually very confusing. However, it does have a neat combo of tweeting for multiple accounts (which SocialToo does not cover). 7/10
Tweet Manager (Scheduled tweets, automated follow and DM new followers, Keyword follow (!). Handle two accounts, DM all followers, auto-reply, Scheduled Tweets): Tweet-Manager is a pretty cool site. The user-interface is very clean and easy to use. It also has a special keyword follow function. Perhaps because it is a bit new, some of the features do not work yet. One obstacle is that it only allows users to schedule 6 tweets at one time (and they need to clean up themselves). 7/10
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Alltop, all the top stories
Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. We update the stories every hour. Pick a topic by searching, news category, or name, and we’ll deliver it to you 24 x 7. All the topics, all the time.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Google & Microsoft Battle Over Twitter.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Performance Marketing Is Under Attack
read more | digg story
Friday, April 03, 2009
Putting a human face on proposed Internet tax legislation | LinkShare Blog
This week, the following letter is being shared with members of the California State Assembly.
In our letter, we respectfully urged the State Assembly to consider the people who run the small businesses this bill would impact. Here is a brief explanation of the bill.
AB 178 attempts to establish that a California nexus is created when any out of state retailer who generates in excess of $10,000 in annual referral based sales enters into any marketing agreement with a California resident or business in exchange for commission or other consideration. Once nexus is established, AB 178 would require retailers that advertise and receive direct or indirect referrals from online advertising on websites to collect sales tax in California.
AB 178 singles out the small businesses of affiliate markers and this creates an extremely uneven playing field for them compared to other types of online and offline advertising
You can read our full letter below. We included these images in the letter -
Mark Kirschner, CMO
Full copy of letter to the California Assembly:
THOUSANDS OF SMALL CALIFORNIA BUSINESSES WILL BE HARMED BY AB 178
(SKINNER and CALDERON)
WE OPPOSE AND URGE YOUR “NO” VOTE
Dear Assembly Member,
On behalf of our tens of thousands of online advertising, affiliate publisher partners in California, we urge you to oppose AB 178.
LinkShare Corporation is a leading global provider of the technology, services and distribution e-retailers need to create, manage and optimize successful affiliate marketing programs. LinkShare empowers clients with the ability to collaborate with affiliate marketing partners online and develop cost-efficient pay-for-performance advertising campaigns.
AB 178 is of great concern to us and our clients because when a similar bill was passed in New York State, hundreds of online merchants terminated their relationships with thousands of affiliates in order to avoid collecting New York State sales tax. This directly resulted in a significant decrease in revenue for small affiliate marketing and advertising businesses in New York.
As you consider AB 178, we believe it is important for you to understand the people and faces behind affiliate marketing and advertising and the impact passage of AB 178 will have on their businesses. At LinkShare, we know that our community of affiliates is composed of some of the most talented small business entrepreneurs around.
Attached are profiles of six of our small business, affiliate publishing partners. One is from California. The other five are from other states, but we believe these profiles illustrate the breadth and depth of affiliate marketing in California.
Ben Chui, a California small business entrepreneur:
When Ben Chui started Ben’s Bargains in January 2000, he was a sophomore at UC Berkeley looking to make some extra money. Five years later, his site, BensBargains.net, not only supported him in earning his undergrad degree, but also funded his Masters in Mechanical Engineering. Today, Ben is running the site full time, and has 2 employees.
Perhaps the most touching story of our profiles is that of Todd Martini:
In 1998, Todd Martini developed a web site to post photos of newborn daughter Alexandra so friends and family could see them. That all changed when Alex was diagnosed with Leukemia. To raise money for his daughter’s multiple surgeries, he turned to the LinkShare affiliate program for help. Today, AlexsCoupons.com has 214 LinkShare merchants, who play a key role in helping the Martini family pay the massive bills related to Alex’s treatment, and sustain her miracle recovery.
Both Ben and Todd manage coupon websites. They are no different than the weekly coupon circular in the local Sunday newspaper or a local value pack mailer, except both Todd and Ben publish these coupons on the web.
Like Ben and Todd, all affiliate marketers work within an advertising model that allows small businesses to display advertising on behalf of retailers whom they normally would not have exposure to without with an advertising agency. The affiliates do not own the customers nor do they transact a sale.
AB 178 attempts to establish that a California nexus is created when any out of state retailer who generates in excess of $10,000 in annual referral based sales enters into any marketing agreement with a California resident or business in exchange for commission or other consideration. Once nexus is established, AB 178 would require retailers that advertise and receive direct or indirect referrals from online advertising on websites to collect sales tax in California.
AB 178 singles out the small businesses of affiliate markers and this creates an extremely uneven playing field for them compared to other types of online and offline advertising. This will in turn, will reduce California-based affiliates’ ability to compete with other forms of advertising, as well as affiliates in neighboring states.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is an example. Imagine the newspaper weekly circular mentioned above. The agency that creates the ads in the circular does not create a nexus; neither does the newspaper running the ads. However, under AB 178, someone who places pay for performance advertising on a website creates a nexus.
In New York State, tens of thousands affiliates were terminated from affiliate programs by merchants, and we expect the passage of AB 178 will have the same impact in California. This will mean lost revenue and lost jobs for California’s small affiliate marketing, web publishing businesses. This will devastate these small, entrepreneurial businesses including Ben, Todd and the other affiliates featured in our profiles.
We urge you to read the attached profiles and take the time to understand affiliate marketing before you vote on AB 178. We have also attached a list of all the California cities where we have partnerships with affiliates for your review, so you can understand how many small advertising businesses will be impacted by this bill.
Thank you for your consideration of this matter. Again, we urge you to oppose AB 178 because of the impact it will have on small businesses in CA.
Sincerely,
Mark Kirschner
Chief Marketing Officer
ad:tech San Francisco Session - MediaTrust Sponsored Workshop: Performance Marketing--Getting the Most from Your Marketing Dollar in a Tough Economy
| MediaTrust Sponsored Workshop: Performance Marketing--Getting the Most from Your Marketing Dollar in a Tough Economy |
| How can marketers get the most from their budgets in a difficult economic climate? We’ll explore how to attain more from a smaller budget via performance marketing with practical, tactical solutions. We’ll look at the pros and cons of allocating dollars to performance marketing and we’ll discuss what technological innovations are coming to the performance marketing space that will maximize budgets and minimize challenges. We’ll discuss:
·The value proposition of paying only for results ·Associated risks with performance marketing ·Innovation in performance marketing ·Outlook for performance marketing for brands
·Pros and cons of allocating dollars to performance marketing ·What technologies and innovations are coming to the performance marketing space. What tools/technologies/techniques you should be aware to help make your job easier ·How brands are using performance marketing |
MODERATOR: Neil Strother, Analyst, Forrester Research PANELISTS: Steve Schaffer, Founder and CEO, Vertive - Publisher of Offers.com Jarvis Mak, Senior VP, Global Research and Insights Director, Havas Digital Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust |
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
HTML forms can be as simple as "Copy and Paste"
Put an HTML form on your site in about 8 minutes.
(Not even a little bit)
Try us out before you spend hours banging your head on your keyboard because you can't get it to work. You have more important things to do with your time.
If you have any questions, check out our Frequently Asked Questions page, or Contact Us.
Affiliate Taxation - Fight California Assembly Bill 178
read more | digg story
Affiliate Theme For Wordpress | Affiliate Marketing Blog - tips, tricks & tutorials
CLINTLENARD.COM
You’re probably seeing this everywhere today. It’s called AffiliateTheme by UBD.
AffiliateTheme will be used on a lot of new sites over the next few months. So, does that mean it will become saturated?
Honestly, I had mixed feelings in the beginning. But, now that I see how it really works, I’m seeing that anyone with half a brain can make this theme super customized without hacking through any code…so it’s nearly impossible for it to become too saturated, IMO. At least not for a while…
There’s so many options available for this bad boy, and you can easily build out quick landing pages or mini sites without knowing HTML, which is awesome for anybody…even newbies. ESPECIALLY newbies, to be honest. At first I thought “this is way too expensive for newbies.” And, it is very expensive - but since you have to have Landing Pages and Mini-sites, I think it would be a GREAT investment for any Affiliate Marketer.
Definitely check it out and see the examples and the video!
[UPDATE]
After playing with this thing for over 24 hours, I actually like it a lot. This thing is like XSitePro on steroids, IMO. It’s using Wordpress as a backbone, since it’s just a theme, which makes it far better than most products out there.
All SE’s love Wordpress, and there’s a reason why. The system is based on Blogging, and it’s well known that it’s very professionally coded and has been designed especially with search engines in mind.
A lot of people think this system takes a lot of time to learn. Not true. Actually, you can learn this system in a matter of 2 hours, tops. They supply you with Videos, Tutorials and even a Support forum.
What makes this theme even more special is that it’s easily customizable…as in you can quickly create your own Banners and Backgrounds based on this theme, within a few minutes. If you’ve got basic Photoshop skills, it’s not a problem at all.
Are you good with CSS? If so, this theme lets you bring in your own CSS with a few clicks.
Know your way around Wordpress? That makes it even better… you can obviously, EASILY customize this theme with ease, through the code itself.
BUT, if you don’t know ANY of the above, that’s what makes this theme awesome. It’s made for people of all levels, and it makes it really easy for those who don’t know HTML, or have never built their own website.
I prefer the Super version, as it comes with a ton of extra banners and stuff. It can also give you more ideas for future Layouts/Banner versions for other projects. While it is a bit expensive, it’s FAR, FAR cheaper than hiring an LP designer, or buying Dreamweaver and trying to learn it.
If you’re a newbie - I highly suggest this theme. ESPECIALLY those of you who don’t know much about HTML, or don’t have the time or patience to learn it.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Top 100 Advertising & Marketing Companies, inc5000 Article - Inc. Article
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