By Guest Blogger, on July 6th, 2010
Running a hyper-local website about daily specials can be quite grueling. In order to keep readers, you need to update at least once a day, or people will stop visiting your site. Raleigh Specials Tonight averages about 600-800 hits per week and 50% of that traffic is returning. I have very loyal readers and I am grateful for that, but I know I need to keep coming with the content if I want it to stay that way.
Where do I find daily content for my site every day? When I first started the site about a year ago, it was tough. I had to seek the information myself by going to individual restaurant websites. I still do that occasionally, but here are some tools I use to keep up with my community so I always have fresh content:
By Zachary Zawarski, on June 28th, 2010
[This is a guest post from Zachary Zawarski of Zadling, a Google Apps Consultant]
Two email newsletters that I signed up for were Mike Michalowicz and Brian Tracy’s newsletters. Most of you probably know Brian Tracy, a self-help author who mostly helps salespeople. Mike Michalowicz, who might be slightly less known than Brian Tracy, but still immensely popular as you may have seen him on MSNBC or CNBC, is the man behind The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur myself, I set out to gain some resources that would help me increase my own sales, so I subscribed to each of their newsletters.
Like I discussed in my last guest blog, email marketing is all about constantly providing your subscribers with value and not constantly bombarding them with your sales message because they’ll quickly unsubscribe if all they’re seeing is sales copy rehashed week after week.
Both Mike and Brian have very different email styles. Brian Tracy has a template design. The email is formatted nicely with various images and colors and with a footer full of resources such as links to his website and links to his Facebook and Twitter pages. Mike, on the other hand, uses no images or color at all — just plain text.
So who do you think has a better and more effective email marketing campaign?
By Guest Blogger, on April 27th, 2010
[This is a guest contribution by Josip Petrusa of It's Josip not Joseph.com]
The Millennials (or Generation-Y) demographic have proved to be an interesting group that we’ve tried to reach. I’m sure we’ve all read and even seen how different this generation is from previous ones. Whether that is in the workplace, on the street and even at home (for those of you who have siblings or even Gen-Y kids), you can tell there is something different about them.
The Millennials have also been the hot-topic in the marketing world. How can you market to a generation that is absolutely everywhere but with no traditional usage of media as opposed to previous generations. The way they read, watch TV and use the internet is different. They might be doing a combination of these, so marketing to them is just being overshadowed by their multi-tasking abilities, but they’re also as likely not to do any of them, so reaching them seems to be near impossible.
As a Millennial and member of Generation-Y myself, I’m going to provide you with 3 insights of how to market to Millennials.
Continue reading How to Market to Millennials
By Damian Davila, on April 14th, 2010
This is the 3rd part of a series analyzing the successes and failures of Facebook in the art of writing and implementing e-mail newsletters.
In the first part, we analyzed an example of a Facebook e-mail newsletter that was a great example of how to implement permission marketing, how to avoid the brochure mentality, and how to do seamless product placement.
In the second part, we analyzed the mistake that Facebook is doing by by using a no-reply e-mail and hiding away its contact form from its users.
In this third part, we will discuss how Facebook Research did right and wrong when sending a recent survey e-mail on Tuesday, Apr 13, 2010 at 6:04 PM (HST).
Continue reading How Facebook Does E-mail Newsletters III
By Damian Davila, on March 18th, 2010
What do Facebook users want?
From obsessed Facebook users to so called social media socialites to marketers, everybody wants to find out what is popular on this social networks.
Finally, thanks to Chitika, Inc. they all can put down the magical 8-ball and have some guidelines.
Who is Chitika?
Founded in 2003, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), is a full-service on-line advertising network serving over 2 billion monthly impressions across more than 80,000 websites.
How did Chitika find out what Facebook users want?
Continue reading What Facebook Users Want
By Damian Davila, on March 18th, 2010
At the end of February 2009, Facebook launched Facebook Pages as a way to allow businesses and brands to strengthen their online image on Facebook and increase their potential interaction with Facebook users.
A Facebook Page looks very much like a regular Facebook Profile and there are several organizations and business that have one such as AT&T.
According to official figures from Facebook, there are:
- More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
- More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
- More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
- Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
- Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month
No matter how impressive these figures are.
Apparently they are not enough for Facebook. Here’s why.
By Damian Davila, on March 12th, 2010
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Recently I got back in touch with a close friend whose hobby is to tune up his cars and “pimp them out” like that famous MTV show.
One important part of his hobby is to look for car accessories and truck accessories that add a distinctive touch.
He spends a lot of time looking online for custom grilles, spoilers, wheels, car floor mats, body kits, tail lights, and all things automotive that unveil beauty and style to his rides.
Talking with him about his online searches for car parts, reminded me a lot of a previous article where I discussed how to attract fashionistas online.
We started talking about his experience in several websites and what made his search easier and what didn’t. Here’s a review of what I learned about the user experience of a car enthusiast visiting websites for car parts: what turns him off and what engages him.
[This is a guest post from Amy G. Howard, Founder of Raleigh Special Tonight. Follow her at @amgenove.]
If you received a dollar for every online community idea that has been tried on the Internet for the last decade, you’d probably be a very rich person by now.
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