Most relevant news, techniques and tools for authors looking to promote their books inexpensively off and online. We refer to and utilize many of the Guerrilla Marketing techniques and have created some of our own geared specifically to book promotion and marketing. Our website is the ground where we put into practice our marketing efforts. Membership is FREE.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?
EzineArticles Blog Transition After a month of planning, this morning we moved the EzineArticles blog from a sub-directory over to a sub-domain. For a short transition period, we’ve rewritten the old URL’s to the new URL’s so that you shouldn’t have any problems with finding old entries. Reason for the change is to isolate the blog from the rest of [...]
After a month of planning, this morning we moved the EzineArticles blog from a sub-directory over to a sub-domain.
For a short transition period, we’ve rewritten the old URL’s to the new URL’s so that you shouldn’t have any problems with finding old entries.
Reason for the change is to isolate the blog from the rest of the site and help raise its visibility beyond our existing members so that we can engage in a larger market discussion on the various article writing & marketing issues that impact everyone involved.
Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”
On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.
Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.
It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!
Its Name is Zookoda Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...
The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.
Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader? Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.
Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.
I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.
Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.
Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.
When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.
I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.
My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)
From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.
This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.
The Corporate Blogging Book Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.
Blogging is Publishing I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.
On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.
The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!
Not Just for Blogs
I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.
I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.
As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.
That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.
Then along comes blogging software.
What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.
And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.
As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.
Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.
Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)
Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.
But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.
Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.
Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:
publishing interface
admin and setup stuff
templates
I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.
For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:
Edit the blog preferences
Set up custom fields
Put in a sample post
Set up categories
Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.
And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.
Voila!
1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.
Has GoDaddy Started Hiding Whois Contact Information? I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site. No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising.
I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.� No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising:
It’s only when I go to their Web site that I can get the contact information for Registrant, Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact.
While I’m sure they did this to “cut down on spam” or something like that, I find it an unacceptable tradeoff that makes it harder for me to administer domains.� And I think it might be a violation of their duties as a domain registrar.
Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.
Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.
Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!
I’m in San Francisco for the first ever Dummies Authors Conference. There are about 50 Dummies authors here, and the day is packed with discussions about marketing books, the uses of agents, and general Dummies best practices. It’s going to be an interesting day! You can check out the agenda here.
There’s been a bunch of press already, but the most exciting news of the day is that the conference is up for being featured on the Evening News with Katie Couric. In fact, you can actually vote to send Steve Hartman to the conference tomorrow by going to http://www.cbsnews.com and clicking on Assignment America. We’re up against some guy who can talk really fast and a California prison program to send female juvenile delinquents to finish school ("Can etiquette, fashion and dance really set a girl straight?"). Wouldn’t you rather get the inside scoop on the For Dummies books? Of course you would. Go vote.
And, if I haven’t convinced you already, check out the other press coverage today:
The “dummies” label could be the weirdest aspect of the whole franchise, as the authors are not really supposed to assume their readers are dumb, just uninformed. The publisher, in an official statement on the matter, calls it a “term of endearment.”
20 Ways to Use Gmail Filters Written by Leo Babauta One of the coolest things about Gmail is its filters - set up properly, filters can add loads of functionality to your already-powerful Gmail account. Save time and space, rid your inbox of unwanted emails, and turn your Gmail into a multi-functional tool with simple filters. There are some limitations to Gmail’s filters [...]
One of the coolest things about Gmail is its filters - set up properly, filters can add loads of functionality to your already-powerful Gmail account. Save time and space, rid your inbox of unwanted emails, and turn your Gmail into a multi-functional tool with simple filters.
There are some limitations to Gmail’s filters that I’d like to see improved in the future, including:
the inability to mark a post as read
the inability to create live “smart folders”
difficulty in adding a large number of email addresses to a filter
But all in all, the filter function is very cool. Here are some ideas for how to use it:
Killfile. If people send me too much junk mail (jokes, chain mail, etc.), they get added to my killfile. It’s a simple filter that looks at the “from” field and deletes the message if it’s one of the addresses I’ve added to the filter. Every now and then I’ll decide to add someone to my killfile, and I’ll just open up the filter and add their address.
Booleans. The filter works much like Gmail’s search function, in that you can add search terms such as AND or OR or NOT. So I can look for addresses that are from a number of people (using OR), or emails that must include all of the words on a list (using AND). Use search operator symbols to make it even easier: “|” for OR, space for AND, “-” for NOT, and parentheses to group different terms in your search string.
Other search terms. Beyond the common terms above, your filters can use other terms such as “from:”, “to:”, “has:”, “is:”, “filename:”, and “label:”, among others. Using these terms, you can make your filters even more powerful.
Send reminders to someone. One of the things I wish Google would add to Gmail is the ability to send a delayed email. This would allow me to send reminders to someone at regular times. Instead, I sign up for a reminder email service to send reminders (meant for other people) to my gmail address, and then set up filters to forward the reminders to various people depending on the subject or content of the email. It’s not perfect, but it allows me to send reminders to different people on a regular basis.
Calendar and log. I set up Google Calendar to send me reminders of events. You can set up a label (”events”) so that your calendar reminders go straight to the label, star the message, and skip the inbox. Now not only are your events in one place, instead of scattered through your inbox, you can unstar the message when you complete the task or event, and now you also have a log of all the things you’ve done.
To-dos. This is a commonly used function, but you can email yourself tasks that you need to do, and then set up a filter that has your email address in both the “to” and “from” boxes, that applies the label “to-do” to the message. This will allow you to view all your to-dos in one filter. Or, if you’re a GTD fan, you could set up to-dos for each context (@work, @home, @errands, @phone, etc.), by creating different labels for each, and then setting up filters for different email addresses. Email yourself at yourname+work (you don’t need the @gmail.com part), and set up the filter to label that address “@work”, and so on for each context.
Follow up. Even if you’re not a GTD fan, having a follow-up label is a must. Simply set up a filter with an email address such as “youname+follow” and put it in the “has the words” filter field, and have this filter label it “@follow” and skip the inbox. Now when you send out an email that needs to be followed up on, put yourname+follow in the “bcc” field, and it’ll go into your “@follow” label. Be sure to check this label once a day so you can follow up on your emails.
Send spam to trash. Instead of having Gmail-filtered spam go into your Spam folder (and have the annoying count of unread spam by the folder’s name), set up a filter with “is:spam” in the “has the words” field (just click “OK” on Gmail’s warning dialog box when you click next step) and “Delete it” as the action. Now all spam messages will go in your trash.
Archived bookmarks. If you use del.icio.us and other bookmarking services, you can archive them all in a Gmail label (”bookmarks”). Get the feed urls for each of your bookmarking services, enter them in a forwarding service such as rssfwd.com, and then set up a filter to label them all “bookmarks”. Now all your bookmarks are in one place, with Gmail’s great search.
Attachments. If you’re like me, you like to go through your old emails and delete a bunch of them at a time. I do common searches during the cleanup process, such as “has:attachment”, so that I can look through all my bigger emails and delete them. Make this process quicker by making a label and filter for this search, and for any of your common searches, for that matter.
Media. If you get a lot of media sent to you, such as music files, videos and photos, set up filters (”filename:wmv | filename:mov” for videos, “filename:mp3″ for music, filename:jpg | filename:gif” for photos, or “filename:pdf | filename:doc” for documents). Now you can quickly find any media.
Backups. Create a second Gmail account for storage, and create a filter to automatically forward any emails with attachments (”has:attachments”) to this second address. Now you can delete your old emails without guilt or worry.
Newsgroups or feeds. You can set up filters for your newsgroups, so they don’t clog up your inbox. Or forward your favorite feeds to your Gmail, and automatically label and archive them for later reading. Now you can not only access them from anywhere, but you can search them too.
Bloggers. If you run a blog, you can have all your blog’s comments and pingbacks automatically archived and labeled (”blog”), so your inbox doesn’t get filled up fast. Also have your blog stat reports mailed to you and shunted to this label, so you can get a quick look at your blog’s success at a glance.
Delete old sent emails. There’s no reason, in most cases, to keep your really old sent emails. Delete them. Create a filter with “before:2006/06/01 label:sent” with “Delete it” as the action (you’ll need to click “OK” to Gmail’s warning dialog). Every month or so, update the date of this filter.
No delete. Some emails you don’t want to delete - those precious ones from your kids, for example, or maybe ones from your boss. Set up a label (”nodelete”) and a filter that puts the nodelete label on emails from (or to) the addresses you want. Now, some of the above filters, add the string “-nodelete” so that it doesn’t show these emails. Now you can delete your old sent emails, or your attachment emails, for example, without worry that your kids’ or boss’ emails will be trashed along with the rest of the riffraff.
Flickr. Forward your Flickr account’s feed to your Gmail, with a filter to automatically label it, and now your photos are searchable through Gmail. You can also set up filters to send notices that certain tags in your Flickr account has new photos to certain relatives.
Notes. Email yourself notes on web research, on meetings, on books you’re reading, on classes you’re taking. Set up a filter to archive and label them (if you send notes to yourname+notes, for example). Now they’re searchable and archived and accessible from anywhere.
Twitter. Use your mobile phone to send text messages or IM messages to Twitter, with a keyword at the beginning of each Twitter message (NOTE, TODO, BLOG, FOLLOW, etc.). Forward your Twitter account’s feed to your Gmail, and set up filters for each type of keyword (”note twitter” will be labeled “note” for example). Now you can use your mobile device to send notes, to-dos, follow-up reminders and more to your Gmail through Twitter.
Wildcard. Use the wildcard character (*) for companies that use multiple types of address from the same domain. One great use I’ve seen is to use the wildcard character for vendors such as Amazon or eBay to make it easier to track online purchases. Create a label (”online shopping”) and a filter with such email addresses as “*@amazon.com|*@ebay.com|*@paypal.com|*@barnesandnoble.com”.
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 ..
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 ..
Manly Stuff That Is No Longer Manly Written by Anthony Burch There are many things that will always be manly, like stubble, red meat, and being angry. Other things tend to change as time goes on - tend to lose their manliness factor as the world changes. Before you know it, the manliest thing on the planet has been reduced to an effeminate, [...]
There are many things that will always be manly, like stubble, red meat, and being angry. Other things tend to change as time goes on - tend to lose their manliness factor as the world changes. Before you know it, the manliest thing on the planet has been reduced to an effeminate, useless version of its former self. In the interest of protecting our readers from all things formerly-manly, we begrudgingly present a short list of those things which used to be manly, but now aren’t.
Tattoos
Once the symbol of nonconformity in a hopelessly conservative political landscape, the tattoo has now become the exact opposite - total conformity posing as nonconformity. Like when emo kids pretend they’re all total individuals that nobody understands, but they all somehow manage to look, sound, and act the same. Tattoos have taken on many different meanings in modern society: men with any sort of oriental symbol tattooed on their arms or torso are generally pretentious, pseudo-political douchebags. Guys with barbed wire circling their arms tend to be insecure assholes who probably work out a lot, refer to themselves as “badasses,” and secretly hate everything about who they are. Granted, there are still those older men who got tattoos back when they actually meant something, but they are a dying breed in the face of this new wave of tattooed douchebaggery - the men who were getting inked back in the day are forced to watch, horrified, as an entire generation of neo-yuppies singlehandedly steals one of their generational symbols and perverts it beyond all recognition.
Piercings
There was a time when a man could get a bull ring pierced into his septum and get a little respect. Those days are over. Piercings of any sort have become the method of self-expression to use for emos, Goths, and faux-punk kids all over the planet; it appears that the more boring and self-involved one is, the more piercings must result. Jesus, even women are getting piercings en masse: you find me a chick who doesn’t at least have her belly button pierced yet, and I’ll show you a chick who hasn’t yet reached her eighth birthday.
Stabbing people
In the good old days, one guy would get into an argument with another guy, the words would turn into fists, and the fists would turn into a few inches of cold steel getting mercilessly plunged into the eye socket of the weaker guy. Men would stop, and stare, and as the killer was dragged away by the cops, muttering something about unpaid debts, people would look on in awe - that dude stabbed someone. What a badass. But in a time of so-called intellectualism, fraught with political liberalism and progressive ideals, stabbing people isn’t “cool” anymore. Not only is violent crime now frowned upon, but stabbing people generally appears to be the gayest way to shuffle someone off their mortal coil: years of horror movies and bearded historians have established the blade as the number one phallic symbol of violence on earth (the gun is number two, if only because you can’t kill someone simply by forcing a gun up one of their orifices), and so it now appears that stabbing people no longer has the manly connotation it once had - and pretty soon, shooting people won’t be all that neat either. The only other option left for the violence-loving man is to either not kill people (an unacceptable decision, in every way) or to beat people to death with his bare hands.
Motorcycles
Like the tattoo, the motorcycle used to be a counterculture icon - thanks to Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda (two actors who have also lost a significant amount of manliness), the motorcycle was a symbol of freedom, independence, and rebellion. Nowadays, it represents one of two things:
-The fact that your mom bought you a Yamaha, which you will almost immediately crash
Or
-You’re a middle-aged marketing guy who joined a motorcycle club, rides your bike on the weekends, and secretly puts “Born to be Wild” or “Bad to the Bone” on repeat on your iPod Nano whilst cruising down 6th street at 41 miles an hour next to other similarly repressed middle-aged marketing guys.
Today, the motorcycle has lost literally all of its meaning. While the Hells Angels still run around raping men and women all over the countryside (and God bless ‘em for it), the motorcycle has completely lost its status as an icon of masculinity, given that those most likely to own them today are either vapid, mid-40’s men trying to channel the spirit of Easy Rider without getting more than a few miles away from home, or spoiled preppy kids who stupidly race their crotch-rockets and end up totaling them once they actually have to turn.
Leather
Enough said.
Chivalry
Whether you like it or not, gone are the days of roses, hastily scrawled love poems, and sweet serenades crooned lovingly outside a fair maiden’s window. Today, women may pretend like they want to be courted by a chivalrous gentleman, but in reality the chivalrous man has about as much chance of netting the girl of his dreams as Helen Keller has of winning a darts competition. Women want a good-looking, arrogant asshole to treat them like crap. You may think that’s overly-misogynistic, but it’s a scientifically proven fact* that once a woman finds out you are attracted to her, her level of attraction towards you drops by at least 50%. Chivalry, in all its forms, focuses on the man professing his endless love for the woman whilst doing quasi-romantic deeds - deeds that, today, immediately drive women away. It’s an unfortunate trend, to be sure, but an unavoidable one: the chivalrous romantic can write all the love songs and give all the gifts he wants, but outside circumstances aside (in this case, “outside circumstances” means “money”), the chivalrous man will end up with nothing more than his dick in his hands by the end of the day, while the cocky asshole who lifts weights and/or plays guitar chokes the girl of your dreams to death with his penis.
Special Note
This article is not meant to suggest that any man who might have tattoos or piercings or leather or a motorcycle are immediately unmanly: we simply wish to suggest that the things, the objects themselves, have lost their intrinsic worth as objects of manliness. If we were to see a 300 pound guy with tattoos and piercings, wearing a leather jacket and holding a knife, we’d still be very, very scared of him, and would certainly be in no position to doubt his manliness. One can possess all these pseudo-manly traits and still be the baddest motherfucker around - it’s just that the actual objects themselves no longer mean what they used to.
Arielle Ford, Publicist biography Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
How to Get Your Book Published: Quicktime Video Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
Write a Book and Get Your Book Published: Subscribe to America's Most Successful Book Publicist's Newsletter Today Sign up for the free HOW TO GET YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED and PUBLICIZED newsletter from Arielle Ford. In case you don't know Arielle by name, she's publicized hundreds of authors and books. 11 of which are #1 Bestsellers. Her clients include Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dean Ornish, Jon Gordon, Debbie Ford, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Arielle has compiled a list of nearly every question a first-time or experienced author wants to know about publishing, publicity, building a platform and the book business. Every issue is jam-packed with answers to the questions that get your book published and you booked on radio, television, newspapers and magazines.
How to Get Your Book Published: Windows Media Video Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
The Dawn of the Hyper-Networked PR Era The old axiom in business is that it's not what you know, but who. With so much collective knowledge now available online for free, the saying holds more than ever. Pure-play PR professionals must invest heavily in strengthening and expanding...
Blog Search is Dead and Google Killed It Technorati today launched a new look and feel and under the hood improvements that are designed to help searchers find what they're looking for across the live web, not just blogs. David Sifry sums up the changes over on their...
links for 2007-05-27 Achieving emptiness with "Bit Literacy" - (37signals) (tags: GTD productivity rss Books) The Laws of Simplicity » laws (tags: simplicity) USPS Stamps Yoda Brilliant marketing campaign is this. (tags: starwars USPS Marketing movies)...
links for 2007-05-26 Google Earth Blog: Rising Water Effects for NYC in Google Earth - Part III Yikes. This makes me glad I live in the burbs - and far enough inland. (tags: GoogleEarth Maps environment NYC) The Raw Feed: 10 'Swiss Army...
links for 2007-05-25 Make-It-Yourself 'Star Wars' "Lucasfilm Will Post Clips From Film Saga on the Web, Inviting Fans to Edit at Will" (tags: starwars Mashups Video movies) Real-time collaboration with Comapping on-line mind maps Ian says Comapping is a new on-line mind mapping...
The Worldbeam and the Next Web What will the web look like in the future? According to one Yale professor, it will be very different than what we use today. In a recent issue of Forbes, David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University,...
links for 2007-05-29 TheNextWeb.org - Amsterdam, June 1, 2007 » Blog Archive » The Next Web Documentary Five questions about the next web. (tags: Blego Video Web2.0 Events) The Difference Between Marketing, PR, Advertising, and Branding An oldie but a goodie. (tags: Advertising...
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 ..
Mark Twain, Father of the Internet The Tyee has published my article Mark Twain, Father of the Internet. Excerpt: Mark Twain died in 1910, a lifetime before the founding of ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet and the web. So that you could read this on The Tyee, hundreds of brilliant scientists and engineers worked for years to get the clanking, room-sized computers of the 1960s to communicate with one another. You've probably never heard of...
Mark Twain died in 1910, a lifetime before the founding of ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet and the web. So that you could read this on The Tyee, hundreds of brilliant scientists and engineers worked for years to get the clanking, room-sized computers of the 1960s to communicate with one another. You've probably never heard of them: Vinton Cerf, J.C.R. Licklider, Robert Taylor, and Paul Baran, to name just a few. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, was a latecomer.
Yet I contend that Mark Twain (one of the great science-fiction writers of all time) first conceived the Internet. Like the wizards of the 1960s and '70s, his contribution has been forgotten. But like Arthur C. Clarke, who conceived the earth satellite and could have patented it, Twain understood the idea of the Internet before the scientists did. If anything, he leaped beyond the text-based Internet to the just-dawning world of video chat and vlogging (video blogging).
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 ..
Viral Marketing Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others... Published in HindustanTimes.com 13th S ..
Global Voices A few weeks ago I discovered: Global Voices Online, and since the site has just had a makeover, this is a good time to introduce it here. The value of the site lies in pulling together blogs and bloggers from all over the world. Ordinarily we're not going to seek out a blog in Nepal or West Africa, but GVO provides a kind of planned serendipity: it makes it easy...
A few weeks ago I discovered: Global Voices Online, and since the site has just had a makeover, this is a good time to introduce it here.
The value of the site lies in pulling together blogs and bloggers from all over the world. Ordinarily we're not going to seek out a blog in Nepal or West Africa, but GVO provides a kind of planned serendipity: it makes it easy to discover sites we might never find otherwise.
Throwing In The Towel I believe that the number one way to find financial success is to first find what you love doing, and then find a way to get paid for doing it. I see people that spend weeks asking everyone they talk to for online business opportunities that they can make money at. It never crosses their [...]
Starting a Blog After a reader of my flu blog asked for advice, I decided to answer in some detail: Should you start a flu blog? has some general suggestions that any webwriter might find helpful. Tell me what you think....
After a reader of my flu blog asked for advice, I decided to answer in some detail: Should you start a flu blog? has some general suggestions that any webwriter might find helpful. Tell me what you think.
Was I Ahead of Myself? When my publisher asked for a third edition of my book, I suggested calling it "3.0" as if it were a piece of software. (Well, it's better than "Geeks' Edition," which was the second edition.) Now I seem to have anticipated the Next Big Thing, according to this story in the New York Times: Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense. Excerpt: From the billions of documents that form...
When my publisher asked for a third edition of my book, I suggested calling it "3.0" as if it were a piece of software. (Well, it's better than "Geeks' Edition," which was the second edition.)
From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.
Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.
Referred to as Web 3.0, the effort is in its infancy, and the very idea has given rise to skeptics who have called it an unobtainable vision. But the underlying technologies are rapidly gaining adherents, at big companies like I.B.M. and Google as well as small ones. Their projects often center on simple, practical uses, from producing vacation recommendations to predicting the next hit song.
But in the future, more powerful systems could act as personal advisers in areas as diverse as financial planning, with an intelligent system mapping out a retirement plan for a couple, for instance, or educational consulting, with the Web helping a high school student identify the right college.
The projects aimed at creating Web 3.0 all take advantage of increasingly powerful computers that can quickly and completely scour the Web.
“I call it the World Wide Database,” said Nova Spivack, the founder of a start-up firm whose technology detects relationships between nuggets of information by mining the World Wide Web. “We are going from a Web of connected documents to a Web of connected data.”
Well, connecting data is what writing itself is all about. But I don't know if my book is going to help people navigate the World Wide Database. Still, I totally agree with this pioneer of Web 3.0:
“The system will know that spotless is better than clean,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence researcher at the University of Washington who is a leader of the project. “There is the growing realization that text on the Web is a tremendous resource.”
Blogging a massacre This has been a very bad day in the United States. The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it. The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg....
This has been a very bad day in the United States.
The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it.
The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg.
The mass media like CNN were using cell-phone video from students on campus. Other students have bitterly complained about the slowness of authorities to alert them, whether by email, text messaging, voicemail, or the campus public-address system.
The countries with the most advanced communications systems will be the first to tell the world about catastrophes like this one. But even Third World countries have cell phones and some kind of internet access. Increasingly, we will see car bombings in Baghdad and riots in Mogadishu, disease outbreaks in Jakarta and AIDS deaths in Zimbabwe, reported by those who are there.
Shopping Carts and SEO True shopping carts (those that are added to your already existing website) do not need to be SEO friendly. Other than the buy now or add to cart buttons, which lead to the actual payment page, they only come into effect once your customer decides to make a purchase. Unless a store is selling literally thousands [...]
Tips for a New Website It\'s not easy not easy to promote your website or get sales initially. Following the tips given in this column can at least give your Web site ..
Know Your Target Audience Equally important with knowing your target audience is finding ways to let your target audience know you as a person. Many times when we run an online business, we forget the power of talking with our target audience. Handing people a business card in casual conversation is a common courtesy, but it is unlikely [...]
Small Town Redneck Country Girl There was a small town country girl who had a passion for making gifts and giving them to anyone who wanted them. She didn’t do it for the attention. She handed out the gifts in a private area, outside of the public eye. She did not give the gifts to hear words of thanks or [...]
The Risk of AdSense Revenue Generic advertisements such as Google AdSense absolutely do not belong on a professional business website. No matter how you look at it, it will not help improve your business and may very well have a devastating impact. Is it really worth the risk? Those people who have no clue what Google AdSense is, will likely become [...]
Nielsen on the "Usability Divide" Here's an excerpt from Digital Divide: The Three Stages (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox): Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand. Almost 40% of the...
Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand.
Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills, and yet few websites follow the guidelines for writing for low-literacy users. Even government sites that target poorer citizens are usually written at a level that requires a university degree to comprehend. The British government has done some good work on simplifying much of its direct.gov.uk site information, but even it requires at least a high school education to easily read.
Lower literacy is the Web's biggest accessibility problem, but nobody cares about this massive user group.
This really is a critical problem. It's one reason why I argue for keeping readability levels as low as possible. It's not dumbing-down the text—it's opening it up to people who can use it if only they can understand it.
Nielsen's post has a link to his guideline for writing for low-literacy users. I also recommend Readability.info, which can give you several good ways to assess your text readability. You can also find a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list, down in the left-hand column.
A Freelance Job in Vancouver This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest: The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December...
This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest:
The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December 14, 2006 (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.); turn-around time for reports is three working days.
If you are available and interested, please contact Biljana Zelenovic at biljana@theconferencepublishers.com or 1-800-265-3973 x226.
Expression Web Designer Beta I had been anxious to check out Microsoft’s new Expression Web Designer, not because I had any issues with FrontPage 2003, but because I like playing with new programs. I was thrilled when I received the download notice for the initial private beta, which they have since offered to the general public. I am probably not [...]
It's time to start brushing up on flash, screencasting, video production, and video networks, syas Brian Solis.
Online video is the next frontier for the communications industry adding a new layer of engagement to any existing PR, marketing and web initiative.
During the week of February 3, YouTube's traffic surged above the combined traffic to all of the television network websites, reported LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise in February..
This is a landmark event in the changing face of web traffic and entertainment consumption, now that entertainment seekers are now more likely to go to YouTube than any other television network or gaming website.
Although you never had to learn how to make a VNR, you might have to learn how to make these online videos.
Being able to produce a good viral piece with a video camera or a using a program like Camtasia could put you ahead of the pack. If you are not going to learn to do it, find a social media agency that can produce these ideas for your clients or your company.
If you're in the LA area, or you're attending the PR Convergence conference in LA next week, come to the Social Media Club meeting. There is no charge and we'll be talking about these ideas.
It's 6 pm - 8 pm Wednesday May 16th at the Universal Hilton.
Start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.
Forrester categorizes social computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation; we use the term "Social Technographics" to describe analyzing a population according to its participation in these levels. Brands, Web sites, and any other company pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers' Social Technographics first, and then create a social strategy based on that profile.
The basis of "social technographics" is the level of consumer participation and they have developed a 'ladder' to show how to use this as a strategy guide.
Creators - publish web content 13%
Critics - comment on other's content 19%
Collectors - use RSS,social bookmarks and tags 15%
Joiners - use social networking sites 19%
Spectators - read blogs, listen to podcasts 33%
Inactives - not involved in any social media 52%
The report also offers insight into how Social Technographics profiles differ by primary life motivation, site usage, and even PC ownership.
Makes good sense to plan your social media and web content strategy around solid research on your target audiences. The basics of good marketing and PR still apply.
Editing Your Blog Posts as Articles After you've posted daily on your key points of a concept, and written a summary with a call to action, it's time to gather the individual posts together and edit them as stand alone articles. Since they are already written,...
Editing the Full Article from Your Blog Posts Continuing our series of blog posts about writing articles that can be used for many purposes (ezines, blogs, article directories, special reports), we come to the next part: how to edit the full article after you have created several stand...
Formatting an Article Into Adobe PDF This is the next step in our serial writing project. Take your full article, after it is edited, and convert it to an Adobe PDF file. This preserves your formatting and content across all computer systems so that it can't...
May 16 was Google's Searchology day. They unveiled a number of new Google services to the media, and the one that produced the most buzz was Google Universal – the redesign of the site and the way the search engine finds and displays results.
Here are some comments from the experts:
“Google is integrating the results from several different kinds of searches - text, photos, video, news, books, etc. - onto one page. It may encourage searchers to increase their use of Google products that aren't getting as much attention. It's Google's way of making vertical search results more visible. And it means more work for you.” Developer Shed Weekly
“A major change to how Google presents search results, a revision to the "main" Google that weaves videos, news, books, and other results into the Web-page results you get.” PC world “Google’s universal search adds content such as relevant videos, images, news, and maps to standard Web links with search queries. Will this move spell the end of search engine marketing?” Information Week
“Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. Search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities.” Search Engine Land
The old Google search results page has disappeared. News, images and video results are being displayed on page one along with web pages. In order to make room for these extra Google vertical results some of the current page one results get bumped off the page.
What does this mean for your SEO efforts? Content, content, content is more important than ever.
Create a constant flow of optimized news that gets picked up in Google News on your keywords
Make sure you use images as content and tag and optimize all images with keywords
Add video to your site where appropriate. Tag and optimize it for search.
Syndicate your content. Put your press releases, articles, images and video in an RSS feed for greater visibility
See Also
Google 2.0 Google Universal Danny Sullivan's excellent overview of how Google Universal is affecting search results.
Entertainment Execs See CGM as a Threat Amateur digital videos, podcasts, mobile phone photography, wikis and social-media blogs are one of the top three challenges they face today.
Consumer Generated Media (CGM) or User Generated Media - whatever you call it, it has entertainment execs worried.
According to a new Accenture study of senior executives in the media and entertainment industry in North America and Europe, more than half said the ability and eagerness of individuals to create their own content is one of the biggest threats to their business.
70 percent of respondents said they believe that social media, one of the largest segments of user-generated content, will continue to grow, compared with only 3 percent of respondents who said they view social media as a fad.
Other key points of the study:
68% of the respondents said they believe that within three years their businesses will be making money on user-generated content
62% said they believe their companies will make money through advertising and sponsorships of social media
21% anticipate improved profits from subscriptions
18% expect profits from pay-per-play offerings
24% of respondents said they do not yet know how their businesses will profit from user-generated content.
Worldwide revenue from UGC content will increase from $80 million in 2006 to $1.6 billion in 2011.
Flash continues to be the output format of choice.
As more UGC content is viewed on the TV rather than the computer monitor, the impetus to both submit and receive higher quality content will translate to much larger files being uploaded and downloaded.
Roger Faxon, chief executive of EMI Music Publishing said the music industry is moving "from a sales model to a consumer consumption model or participation model, where its economics are predicated on the use patterns of consumers as opposed to the purchase patterns..."
Perhaps it's time your company took this view. But before you rush into social media, make sure you understand where your visitors and customers are on the social technographics ladder - see last post. A social media strategy is necessary to make this all work.
New Blog Coming I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can [...]
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.
Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.
Bo
Advertorials: Step 3 Explain the Problem I just wrote about steps 1 and 2 to crafting an advertorial that persuades readers to buy or register for your product or service over at Biz Tips Blog. Just to review, those steps are: 1. Grab attention with a...
Branding Your Business on Blogging and Beyond Radio Blogging and Beyond Season 2, Episode 6The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman with guest expert Liz Goodgold of DUH! Marketing May 24, 2007, 3 pm PT (6 pm ET) Blog Talk Radio Business Branding for the Little Guys...
Where is Bo? First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with [...]
First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with the blog content because I noticed that what my readers need is not “techniques” but rather, motivation and inspiration. I’ve tried to do both, and was kinda lost, to be honest. So, in 2007, I will make case studies and share the experience with you. I hope this will motivate you and inspire you to go after the things you desired to achieve.
Anyway, the main reason why I wasn’t able to come near the PC was that I’m in the progress of moving to a new house. To be more exact, we are moving back to one of my investment houses. We are going to sell the house we are currently living and move back to the one which has a big basement.
The reason for this move is to make a physical office for my online business company. Marketing Syndrome Inc. will have its physical office at a basement of my house :) Currently, I’m busy doing the renovation of the house and the office. It’s about 10 minutes from my current house and I’m making a trip daily to do some work. I have to hire contractors for some tasks, but I’m doing the most of the work myself. Ah! I know what you are thinking! Outsource! well, no. I’m doing it because I love doing house renovation with my wife. It’s our only hobby that we both enjoy doing :)
So, here is what I’m up to. If your goal is to earn a full-time income from niche marketing, working from home, make sure to come back to my blog. Because you will learn everything about it from this blog. I have a lot to share with you in this field and I barely scratched the surface. I haven’t share with you anything about my main affiliate campaigns that bring me the major portion of my income. You will read all about it for free in 2007.
I’m also exploring new ways to bring passive income online consistently, so I will be sharing this with you also. The software I’m currently exploring is called “Build A Niche Store“, which is believe to be a very effective tool for niche marketers. I will be testing this software thoroughly in January and February. So expect to hear more about it in the next posts.
Hey, Stupid! Can You Hear Me NOW? Grab their attention. In fact, steal it. Get it away from everything else by rocking their boat. Heck, why not tip it over. What words can you use in your email subject line or sales copy title that will do...
Podcast Recommendation I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!
How Not To Email Me - or Anyone Else If You Want Results We learn from other people's mistakes, so here goes a prime example of what not to write in an email message if you want to get results. First off, this person put Joan Stewart's name in the subject line: The...
Advertorials: Step 5- What's Your Solution? To review, here are the 4 steps to writing persuasive copy in the form of an advertorial so that you can be educating at the same time as promoting your business:1. Grab attention with a list of 3 or 5...
Are You Promoting or Educating? Adam Urbanski's been teaching marketing for several years now and each time Denise and I are exposed to his wisdom, we come away with something new. This time, at his Attract Clients Like Crazy(tm) Boot Camp in Irvine last week,...
Please Update RSS FEED! It’s here now, my new blog is ready. Please update your RSS feed to… http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome New blog is located at: http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/ See you there!
I Can’t Find a Niche Topic that I’m Passionate About! This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers. “Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or “Should I go where the money is made?” Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being [...]
This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.
“Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or
“Should I go where the money is made?”
Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.
I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.
So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.
Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.
Friday Fun - Catching Up with Myself Once a week I indulge myself and share what's really going on with my work and life. I kinda dislike those self-serving blogs that do this all the time. Here's my life: Got up to find one of the kitties...
Sneak peak of my new blog It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you. The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a [...]
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.
The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a money making site. You will be given the exact steps which I follow to make a profitable website, plus website templates that I use. You will find them under tutorial series. I’m sharing the stuff that you don’t find in paid stuff.
I know the screenshot is blur and too small, but I can’t disclose it yet :) Talk to you soon.
What Happened to the Adsense Template Page? I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to [...]
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to take it down permanently.
I’ve put up some free downloads there for future visitors.
Thanks for your support for sharing the template with your list members and blog readers. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it :)
Bo
WordPress 2.1 is Ready Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it. Download WordPress 2.1.
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.
1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.
May 16 was Google's Searchology day. They unveiled a number of new Google services to the media, and the one that produced the most buzz was Google Universal – the redesign of the site and the way the search engine finds and displays results.
Here are some comments from the experts:
“Google is integrating the results from several different kinds of searches - text, photos, video, news, books, etc. - onto one page. It may encourage searchers to increase their use of Google products that aren't getting as much attention. It's Google's way of making vertical search results more visible. And it means more work for you.” Developer Shed Weekly
“A major change to how Google presents search results, a revision to the "main" Google that weaves videos, news, books, and other results into the Web-page results you get.” PC world “Google’s universal search adds content such as relevant videos, images, news, and maps to standard Web links with search queries. Will this move spell the end of search engine marketing?” Information Week
“Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. Search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities.” Search Engine Land
The old Google search results page has disappeared. News, images and video results are being displayed on page one along with web pages. In order to make room for these extra Google vertical results some of the current page one results get bumped off the page.
What does this mean for your SEO efforts? Content, content, content is more important than ever.
Create a constant flow of optimized news that gets picked up in Google News on your keywords
Make sure you use images as content and tag and optimize all images with keywords
Add video to your site where appropriate. Tag and optimize it for search.
Syndicate your content. Put your press releases, articles, images and video in an RSS feed for greater visibility
See Also
Google 2.0 Google Universal Danny Sullivan's excellent overview of how Google Universal is affecting search results.
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for 
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.