All About GPRS

All About GPRS
Dickens once said, \"never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart.\" Perhaps we can now say, \"never close your ..

SEO and Marketing Basics Are Top of Mind for 2008
Two thirds focus on basics and almost half plan to do SEO

A survey of 1700 MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) members conducted by Anderson Analytics, shows  key areas for 2008 are:

• Marketing basics (60% "Very Important") which include specific concepts such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty and ROI were of greatest interest.
• Search Engine Optimization (42%) had relatively wide appeal, and cut across marketers in all fields.
• "Green Marketing" (32%) was another important emerging concept and it was identified as the trendiest marketing buzzword.

See Also

• Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008
  This is the first of a series of studies by MENG which will make a major contribution to the growing effectiveness of marketing.

Everything you wanted to know about Copyrights


How to write an effective copy
Finding just the right words to describe your product or service isn\'t as easy as it looks, says Puneet Mehrotra. Published on 12th October ..

Conversational Marketing is Actually a PR Technique
PR Can Learn From Successful Online Ad Campaigns

In a recent post about who is in the conversation John Batelle that while the  online conversation has very obvious benefits for the users, one of the troublemsome spots has been how do we keep it going and still pay the rent?  Or the hosting, in this case.

Most writers who have a following online write because it's a passion. Readers/viewers come back because the content is compelling and they value the conversation.

Batelle makes the case that advertisers who are joining the conversation - those who are brave and innovative enough to learn the grammar and language - get the most bang for their marketing buck.

He cites some good examples in this long post about Conversational Marketing

Advertisers who use the medium to actually talk to their readers and get their  feedback?   Now where have I heard the phrases 'establishing and maintaining relationships with your audience' and  'creating a climate of mutual understanding between an organization and its publics'?  Oh yes, it's in the definition of public relations.

Seems the ad folk are using PR tactics, And it's working.  

Take a leaf out of their book. Figure out where the your particular pilgrims are pitching their tents and learn the language and grammar of their conversation.

The Next Big Thing
Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..

CES: What Happens in Vegas.......
Influences your marketing strategy

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas every January is usually techie heaven, but this year the show is crawling with marketers looking for the latest digital innovations.  And they're not just CMOs from the hi-tech sector either. 

Among the 140 000 people looking the lastest, greatest, neatest and coolest personal technology gadgets are CMO's from Fortune 500 companies from all sectors. Some of the gadgets, digital media and tech wizardry seen at the show will not be commercially available for several years, if at all.  But the increasing importance of this technology in consumers' lives, and how digital media impacts and shifts consumer behavior, is of paramount importance to marketers - hence their presence at CES.

Many of these CMOs are walking the floor with their agencies, looking for new ideas that will impact their marketing strategy in the future. And they'll be doing a lot of walking.  The show floor is the size of 35 football fields! That's a lot of new ideas and gadgets to take in.

If you're not going to Vegas this week, keep your eye on the online reports about CES.   Here are just a few that were featured at the innovations event on Saturday night.

.

See Also

• CES Special Report
  All the news and gossip from this year's consumer electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas

Content is King on a Website
Content can make or break a website. The power of the written word has been witnessed many a time. Products have become success stories, resumes trans ..

Which search engines to target?
Some search engine ti

Viral Marketing
Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others... Published in HindustanTimes.com 13th S ..

Generating Revenue Through Advertising


Top 100 Funny Quotes
Written by Left of Zen Albert Einstein Quotes 1. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. 2. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. 3. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. 4. [...]

Written by Left of Zen

Albert Einstein Quotes

1. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

2. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

3. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

4. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

5. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

6. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Fredrick Nietzsche Quotes

7. In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.

8. A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

9. Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

10. Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

11. Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

Mark Twain Quotes

12. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

13. Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

14. I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.

15. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

16. The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

17. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

Voltaire Quotes

18. Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

19. If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.

20. Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.

21. No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

22. The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

23. It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

24. There are men who can think no deeper than a fact.

25. Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

26. Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

27. By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

28. Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Plato Quotes

29. One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

30. No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

31. This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

32. Courage is knowing what not to fear.

33. The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Winston Churchill Quotes

34. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

35. If you are going through hell, keep going.

36. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

37. It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

George Carlin Quotes

38. Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

39. A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

40. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

41. You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.

42. Reminds me of something my third-grade teacher said to us. She said, “You show me a tropical fruit and I’ll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala.”

43. I never fucked a ten, but one night, I fucked five twos.

44. What year did Jesus think it was?

45. The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

46. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

47. “No comment” is a comment.

48. If a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.

49. The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Steve Martin Quotes

50. Boy, those French: They have a different word for everything!

51. There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.

52. Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It’s something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.

53. I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.

54. You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies - all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.

55. First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

56. Why is it we don’t always recognize the moment when love begins, but we always know when it ends?
* As Harris K. Telemacher in “L.A. Story” (1991)

Steven Colbert Quotes

57. “To sit here at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush…I feel like I’m dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You now what, I’m a pretty sound sleeper, that may not be enough…Somebody shoot me in the face.”
-Roasting Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ dinner

58. On this show, your voice will be heard - in the form of my voice.

59. There’s a phrase we live by in America: “In God We Trust”. It’s right there where Jesus would want it: on our money.

60. Folks, the President needs a break. He’s like a Black and Decker cordless Dirt Devil vacuum. If you don’t recharge his batteries, he can’t suck.

61. I’ve always been a big fan of beauty. Sure, you can’t judge a book by its cover but who wants to have sex with a book?

62. Now, I don’t see color. People tell me I’m white and I believe them because police officers call me “sir”.

63. Asia: Four little letters, three billion little people.

64. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends that are going to hell.”

65. Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

Jon Stewart Quotes

66. I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.

67. Insomnia is my greatest inspiration.

68. We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There’s just one problem - it’s in North Korea.

69. We declared war on terror-it’s not even a noun, so, good luck.

70. Here’s how bizarre the war is that we’re in in Iraq, and we should have known this right from the get-go: When we first went into Iraq, Germany didn’t want to go. Germany. The Michael Jordan of war took a pass.
Jon Stewart’s Stand-up performance at RIT, 2005

Bill Maher Quotes

71. Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.

72. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

73. Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don’t need.

74. They’re talking about banning cigarette smoking now in any place that’s used by ten or more people in a week,
which, I guess, means that Madonna can’t even smoke in bed.

Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

75. Men want the same thing from their underwear that they want from women: a little
bit of support, and a little bit of freedom.

76. Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them’s making a poop, the other one’s carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.

77. There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, “I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.”

78. Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they’re killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? “Sweetheart, let’s make up. Have this deceased squirrel.”

Larry David Quotes

79. Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man - there’s your diamond in the rough.

80. If you tell the truth about how you’re feeling, it becomes funny.

81. I’m surprized Hitler didn’t round up the toupee people.”

Dennis Miller Quotes

82. A recent police study found that you’re much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run.

83. The average American’s day planner has fewer holes in it than Ray Charles’s dart board.

84. “The only way the French are going in is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq.”

Jay Leno Quotes

85. Here’s something to think about: How come you never see a headline like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?

86. The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.

87. Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average. Which means you’ve met your New Year’s resolution.

88. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.

Rodney Dangerfield Quotes

89. My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.

90. Oh, when I was a kid in show business I was poor. I used to go to orgies to eat the grapes.

91. I’m at the age where I want two girls. In case I fall asleep they will have someone to talk to.

92. A girl phoned me and said, “Come on over. There’s nobody home.” I went over. Nobody was home!

93. Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

Sarah Silverman Quotes

94. When God gives you AIDS - and God does give you AIDS, by the way - make lemonAIDS.

95. I was raped by a doctor. Which is, you know, so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.

Chris Rock Quotes

96. Every town has the same two malls: the one white people go to and the one white people used to go to.

97. I live in a neighborhood so bad that you can get shot while getting shot.

98. If a woman tells you she’s twenty and looks sixteen, she’s twelve. If she tells you she’s twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she’s damn near fourty.

99. “You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn’t want to
go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named ‘Bush’, ‘Dick’, and ‘Colon.’ Need I say more?”

100. “You won’t be able to take your eyes off the next four presenters: Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.”
Chris Rock while hosting the Oscars

101. Gas is getting so expensive I’m gonna ride a mexican to work.

Seth Godin Says Most Marketers Are Out of Sync
Keynote at SES Chicago is food for thought.

If you thought you had Marketing 101 down pat, it's time to think again.

Seth Godin's keynote at SES Chicago lived up to the promise and certainly gave the audience some new ideas to chew on. He started with a new look at the origins of marketing - the story of Josiah Wedgewood, a potter in England in the 1800's at the start of the Industrial Revolution. 

Wedgewood was the first to create a factory environment and a production line with specialized job functions.  He built a showroom and shipped product around the world.  He made millions and his name is still famous in ceramics and china today.  His brother Thomas stuck to the 'tried and true methods.'.  He did it the way it had always been doine before.  He died poor.

The point of this history lesson?  Wedgewood took advantage of changes in society and technology and changed the way he structured his business.  Marketing is not just the whipped cream you add on top, says Godin.  It's a core function of how you operate.your business.  It's a high level decision about how you're going to create, promote, distribute and deliver your wares. If you're smart you adapt your business model to the forces in the marketplace.

Another revolution is upon us, he warns.  And this one will be the biggest yet. If we don't realize this we are going to the Thomas Wedgewoods of our age.

His new book due out in December called Meatball Sundae - is your marketing out of sync? covers the 14 trends that are causing this revolution.

I covered these trends in a previous post.

These are not new ideas or trends. What makes this book different is that Godin gives us direction on what we need to do to take advantage of this revolution in the marketplace.

It's no longer just a BtoB or Bto C world.  It's BtoCtoCtoB.  ther is direct contact between producer and consumer. Poele are connected and they are talking to each other.  Online publishing tools have given consumers the power of voice.

The smart way to do business today is not to look for customers for the products you make, says Godin. Create products your customers want.

YouTube did it and made billions.KIVA is a non profit that is getting ir right.

If you figure out what these trends mean to your business you could be the next success story. 

Actionable Social Media SES Chicago
Social Media step you can take right now

The complaint I hear most often at search and social media conferences is that while the content of the sessions is excellent, it's at a high-level and very general.  They want specifics. What can I do right now, how do I get started? is the question I often get asked.

This session was perfect for folk who want the nitty-gritty, tactical view.

Todd Parsons of BuzzLogic, one of the main players in the field of online reputation management, was the first speaker.

He set the stage with these stats:

• 65 million Americans read blogs every day
• 60 percent do it explicitly to  get an opinion
• 65 pecent of 'power shoppers' spend at least 10 minutes prior to purchase getting online opinions. 
• 3.5 billion brand-related conversations take place online every day.

First and foremost listen to the conversations and be aware of what is being said about you.

Action:  Get an RSS reader and subscribe to searches on your brand name in Yahoo News and Google Blog Search

Linking is what connects all these conversations and you need to initiate and foster good links

Action:  Create good content with authentic stories - engage your audience. Syndicate this content and add links that lead back to your website.

Action:  Track the conversations and see who links to whom. Buzz Logic does this very well.

(I used BuzzLogic for the case study in the November PRoactive Report, which covers online reputation management. It gives you the exact picture of how the  conversation is developing and spreading and the best place to engage.)

Next up was Adam Lavelle of iCrossing.

We're living a connected lifestyle now and we have more and more devices at out fingertips to access content. And it's driven by content.. By 2010 70 percent of content will be user generated.

Your users are shaping the perceptions about your brand.

Action:  Listen.  Be useful

Some brands no longer own the conversation about their brands. He cites 3M and PostIt notes as one example.

Action:  Join forums where people talk about your brand. Become an active member and answer their questions. Offer useful input and support. Use it to build links back to your website.  Do not be overtly commercial.  Be helpful.

Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide spoke next.

Jennifer's actionable tips focused on using Flickr. Images are very important online - they do get people engaged. And in Image Search Technorati pulls from Flickr and so does Yahoo, particularly for 'long tail' phrases (those with more than a few words in the phrase.)

Action:  Add images to your site and set up an account at Flickr.  Tag all images with keywords and phrases.

Flickr has a very active community. 

Action: Get engaged in niche groups relative to your market.  Ask questions. Encourage any brand evangelists you find on Flickr.

Flickr has feeds.  You can use the feeds from your Flickr images to drive traffic to your blog.

Action:  Use your Flickr images in your blog posts 

See Also

• Join the PRoactive Mastermind Group on Facebook
  Be a part of discussions about social media and online reputation management

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