Pros And Cons Of The iPad

Look out Star Trek, here comes the iPad. Looking very similar to the handheld devices in the hands of Captain Jean Luc Picard on the Enterprise, Apple has presented us with the iPad.

The commercials and media coverage has all but declared this next new addition to our technology arsenal as nothing less than a must-have. Having only been available for just over a month, Apple is reporting sales of 200,000 of these little miracles a week.

Naturally, the media coverage on these technology puppies has been growing like virtual kudzu on the net. One in five people have reported that they have plans to buy an iPad within the next year. Consumer reviews state that there’s a reported 92 to 99 percent of satisfied iPad users according to a poll conducted by ChangeWave.

And that’s just in America. It hasn’t even started infiltrating the rest of the world. But, what’s the real deal on the iPad? Is it just another unneeded device, or is it on the road to revolutionizing the way we do things, like the commercials proclaim?

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Turning Visitors into Customers: How to Persuade People to Submit Their Contact Details

boost conversion rateAn online business will not make a sale every time a visitor lands on their website. Should they just accept that and allow the visitor to leave, hoping that they may return at a later date and make a purchase? No. The business should be doing everything they can to persuade every visitor to submit contact details.

Why Are Contact Details Important?

A visitor that leaves a site without purchasing may return at a later date – or so the business hopes. There is no guarantee that this will occur and leaving things to chance is not good business strategy.

Persuading a visitor to leave contact details now, allows the business to treat the visitor as a potential sales target, almost as they had already made a sale and may be interested in future purchases.

Leaving contact details shows a mild interest. The visitor has stated that they wish to be contacted – this is a golden opportunity to gain their trust and gently persuade them to become a paying customer. Contact details provide a source for the business to keep customers up-to-date with new products and promotions.

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Help idaconcpts Climb the List of Top 50 Blogs in Innovation

Dear readers of idaconcpts.com,

Since 2008, this  blog has aimed to provide useful and actionable insights for online marketers around the world.

Thank you for reading idaconcpts. If you visit us frequently you’re in good company: according to Compete.com, idaconcpts received over 8,000 unique visitors in March 2010.

Every single comment at this blog or share through Facebook, Twitter, Stumble or other medium means a lot to me. I always take the time to personally reply to each one of your questions, comments, and messages.

Today I wanted to ask you for one small favor that would mean a lot to me.

My blog www.idaconcpts.com is currently (May 4, 2010) ranked #43 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs.

UPDATE September 4, 2012: Today idaconcpts stands at #14 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs.

UPDATE July 11, 2011: Today idaconcpts stands at #21 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs.

UPDATE August 23, 2010: Today idaconcpts stands at #24 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs.

UPDATE August 9, 2010: Today idaconcpts stands at #29 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs.

UPDATE June 15, 2010: Today idaconcpts stands at #30 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs. You guys rock! We completed the goal before the end of this month!!! Do you think we can reach #25 by the end of this month? Please help idaconcpts by following this blog on this list and/or rating the blog at http://www.networkedblogs.com/topic/Innovation

UPDATE June 2, 2010: Today idaconcpts.com stands at #35 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs. Thank you for your support! Please help idaconcpts reach #30 by the end of this month!

UPDATE May 11, 2010: Today idaconcpts.com stands at #38 at the Top 50 Blogs in Innovation at NetworkedBlogs.  Every follow counts! If you could also rate my blog, I would appreciate it too!

Please follow my online marketing blog on this Facebook Application and help idaconcpts climb some spots on this Top 50 list. You need to have a Facebook account to follow.

Press the “Follow this Blog” button on the right hand bar under the Networked Blogs box or just go here: http://www.networkedblogs.com/topic/Innovation

Thank you for your kind help!

Aloha from Hawaii,

Damian

e-Mail Marketing the Right Way: Provide Value

email marketing[This is a guest contribution by Zachary Zawarski of Zadling]

I don’t subcribe to many e-mail newsletters, but if I do choose to opt into your e-mail list, you better make sure that you’re doing one thing: providing me with value.

We all know that e-mail marketing is a great way to produce sales for your website, but many business owners make the mistake of using mailing lists purely to push their products and services. That is the wrong way to conduct e-mail marketing.

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Average Email Campaign Stats of MailChimp Customers by Industry

Given that E-mail Permission Marketing: it works!, at idaconcpts, we’ve discussed about E-mail Permission Marketing Fundamentals and how to get started with your e-mail permission marketing campaign.

After you’ve learned how to Measure the CTR of Your E-mail Permission Marketing Campaign with Google Analytics, you will need some email marketing benchmarks by industry to be able to properly evaluate the performance of your campaigns.

On July 2009,  eMarketer provided a list of e-mail marketing open and click-through rates worldwide by industry and list size.  Here’s an important update to these e-mail stats via Mailchimp.

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How to Market to Millennials

[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.

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Online Community Lessons from Photojojo

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.

Launching an online community it’s quite easy.

The options to launch an online community are endless: you can create a Ning community, launch a Facebook Page or Group, use a simple online forum, create a Myspace page, etc.

However, the hard part comes when it’s time to keep your community members engaged and interested enough to let others know about how cool your community is.

On this post you’ll learn from the experiences in running an online community by Photojojo’s Founder, Amit Gupta.

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U.S. and Brazil Lead Google’s Top 10 Censorship List

U.S. and Brazil lead Google’s Top 10 Censorship List.

Yes, you read that right.

Brazil and the U.S. are the respective #1 and #2 on Google’s Top 10 Censorship List.

China is hardly the world’s only Internet censor.

According to information released April 20,  2010 which excludes China and several other countries, Brazil and the US lead the world in the number of requests for user data and for the removal of content.

Below is Google’s Top 10 Censorship List.

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There is Now a Better Way to Feed the Twitter Addiction

More and more people are feeding on the frenzy of social networking sites just like Twitter. It’s an enjoyable way to keep up on the latest buzz straight from the source. This social networking phenomenon is responsible for bettering communication, clearing up rumors, and giving social media fans a whole new world of informational possibilities.

While some choose to simply use this technology a little here or a little there, others have developed an absolute addiction to the thrill of keeping up with the daily Tweets. What better news could come to those who love to indulge on their Twitter addiction? Perhaps the best news would be that there is now a better way to get the feed through Twitter.

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Coachella 2010 Using Bing Twitter Maps

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, Funnyordie and Coachella 2010 worked together the weekend of April 16-18, 2010 to engage with music fans from all over the world using geolocation technology.

Everybody knows Coachella is one of the biggest live music events in North America, but there are also millions of fans following the festival online through  initiatives such as Bing Twitter Maps.

What is Bing Twitter Maps?

Bing Maps has a a Silverlight interface, its own version of Google Map’s Street View (called Street Side), Photosynth and Twitter integration–it even has an app store. Bing Maps Twitter’s geolocation API to map out tweets that deal with topics relating to your neighborhood. Bing Twitter Maps places each tweet on the map, along with the Twitterer’s username and avatar. You can drill down based on topics or locations as well.

Here’s a sample screenshot:

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