Author Archives: Jodi Kaplan

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Fame!

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Fame

Image via Wikipedia

Have you heard of the Influence Project?  It’s a campaign by Fast Company magazine.  Sign up, get a special URL, and tell your friends.  The more clicks you get, the more influential you are, and the bigger your picture becomes on the special site they set up.  Everyone gets their photo in the magazine.  Presumably, the most influential is on the cover.

I found out about it from a friend, and cheerfully signed up.

Then, the backlash started. TechCrunch said, ” It’s a pyramid scheme meets linkbait!”

Amber Naslund on Brass Tack Thinking wrote, “They’ve confused ego with influence.”
Fast Company responded saying it’s an experiment in viral marketing

Then, Darren Rowse of Problogger chimed in (sort of), by asking “What do you want, influence or fame?”

Experiment it may be, but I think Darren’s point about the difference between influence and fame is correct.  They’re not measuring influence, they’re measuring fame.  The system can be gamed.  What if  a celebrity chimed in?  Who is (or should be more influential?  Lindsay Lohan?  Or Katie Stegliano, an 11 year old girl who grows vegetables to help feed hungry people in her South Carolina town? (thanks to Ed Brenegar for pointing her out)

What’s more important?  100,000 mindless twitter followers?  Or people who really care about what you do? What will the winner of Fast Company’s have?

What do you think?  Have you joined the project?  Heard of it?  Tried to spread it?

28 Essential Online Marketing Tools

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paint chips

Image by Anosmia via Flickr

Want free tools for your business? These 28 handy helpers save you time, improve your marketing, and make life less stressful.

Five free tools to help you get more traffic, brainstorm ideas, create screen capture videos, and manage projects.

1. Web Site Grader

Web Site Grader reviews your site, checks your keywords, and tells you how effective they are.  It will also give you your ranking in Alexa and Technorati.

2.  Quantcast

A tool that estimates the traffic and the demographics of visitors to your site (male/female, education level, age, etc).  You can use it for other sites too.

3. Bubble.Us

Free mind-mapping software. If you’re visually oriented (like I am) this is a great way to organize information and ideas. It’s like a flow chart for creative types.

4. Tiny Url

If you want to send (or post) a long, messy URL, try using this shortener instead. It’s a lot less cumbersome, and you can even customize it.

5. Scribefire

See something you want to quote on your blog? Or get a quick idea while you’re browsing. Use ScribeFire to drag and drop text into a post (without opening your blogging software). Or, save it for later use.

6. Wordoid

Stuck for a name for a new service or business? Plug in some words and wordoid will come up with suggestions for you.

7. Jing

This free tool takes a quick screen capture video – five minutes or less. If you need something longer, you can get Camtasia (not free, but not expensive).

8. Jott

Turns voice messages into emails. If you leave yourself a message, or someone leaves you one, it automatically appears in your email box (no typing).

9. Basecamp

Great for collaborating with people who are spread out in different cities. Keeps your notes, edits, and project management tools are in one place.

10. Maczot

Woot for Macs. One great deal each day.

11. Make Your Own Buttons

Make your own call to action buttons in photoshop. Plus, another one especially for buy now buttons.

12. Ebook covers

Make your own ebook covers for free. Takes a bit of practice, but it works.

13. 3-D Box.

If you want more ebook options, try BoxShot 3D software. It’s not free (and Mac only), but it will save you a lot of time.

14. Google Link Tracker

Once you finish that ebook, you’ll want to know if anyone is clicking the links back to your site. Great when you want to spread a free book or article.

15. Creative Commons Image Search

Find free images for your blog posts or ebooks. It will search in multiple places at the same time.  You can specify keywords, as well as usage rights, and where to look.

16. The wayback machine

It’s not just for Mr. Peabody anymore. Get your own time machine – and go back and find old versions of your site (or someone else’s) on the Web. It also has photos, old movies, and public domain books.

17. Scribd

Sample book chapters, free (and paid) ebooks, forms and templates – many at no charge. Upload a free ebook of your own and use their traffic to spread it.

18. Dryicons

Free icons in lots of different styles, from glossy to rather scruffy. It’s got blog icons, e-commerce icons, and holidays too.

19. Compfight

An improved Flickr search tool. It shows a full page of photos, plus their sizes (so you can find one that fits your needs without more clicking). You can choose by license too.

20. Veer

A stock image site, but one with photos that are more quirky and interesting than usual. Prices start at $1.

21. Free ideas

Out of ideas? Type a word into the inspiration generator and get photos, quotes, videos, bookmarks, songs, and tweets that match the word.

22. tineye

It’s a reverse image search.  Use it to find how images are being used,  if they’ve been changed, (great if you’re an artist or photographer and want to control the rights to your work) or to see if you can find a higher resolution version of an image you like.

23. E-junkie

An online shopping cart. E-junkie processes the orders, takes the credit card (or paypal information) and notifies you when you’ve made a sale. Use their affiliate program to help other people sell your books too.

24. Evernote (free and paid versions)

Keep track of ideas, save images, write drafts for blog posts, record your thoughts, and Available for both desktop and as an app, which will sync together so you can access it anywhere.

25. Asana – (free and paid versions, depending on your company size)

A project management tool. Use it for web development, tech support tickets, and task tracking (for one person or a team).

26. Scannable – scanning app from Evernote

Scan receipts, documents, scribbled notes (I have lots of these), business cards, and other piles of paper into your phone.  Goodbye clutter.

27. Userium – pre-launch website usability checklist

28.  Grammarly – a better spelling and grammar checker (this one can tell if you used the wrong word (even if it’s spelled correctly), suggest alternatives in context, and spots missing punctuation.

Carts, Horses, and Building an Email Marketing List

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The Cart Before the Horse

Image by emilio labrador via Flickr

Anthony on LinkedIn needed some email marketing tips.

He wanted to use email lists to figure out his target market.  Anthony figured that whoever responded would be a good prospect for his product.  Once he got some those answers, he could then see some patterns (get demographics) and figure out how to market to this audience.

Is this the right way to build an email list?

Anthony has some good ideas.  He’s right that demographics are important.  However, he has his email marketing plan in the wrong order.

He wants to figure out demographics and build a strategy based on who responds to his offer.  That’s backwards. He’s putting the cart first.  The first thing he needs to do isn’t to start marketing.

Audience comes first

The first step in building an email list is to choose your audience. The audience comes first.  Then the marketing strategy.

For instance, if your target market is Spanish-speaking adults who like music, then you know to make deals, buy advertising, etc. with Sabado Gigante (a Spanish-language music and variety show) and similar outlets.

If English-speaking teens are also showing interest, then research the teenage market.   Figure out where they hang out, what they like, and go after them. If you get signups, it’s right. If not, it’s no good and you adjust.

Strategy is second

Once you’ve chosen your audience, you then have to figure out where to reach them.

If your market is on Facebook, hang out on Facebook. If they are on Tumblr, post there.

Interact, ask questions and follow other people too.

Try posting a survey and asking questions about what people want from the sort of product you sell. Find out what’s lacking in your competitors’ offerings.  Is there something there you can take advantage of?  Or, try running a contest (make sure the prize is something they want).  Use the contest or the survey to get signups for your your own email list.

Once you have enough signups, you can get more demographic data and adjust your marketing accordingly.

Horse.  Then cart.  Then driver.

You can’t talk to your audience if you don’t know who it is.  Heck, if you’re marketing in Spanish to people who only speak English, you’re literally not speaking the right language!

5 More Cool Tools for Creatives

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Crayon Tips

Image by laffy4k via Flickr

This edition of cool tools features image finding tools, a site that helps you get ideas, a web launch checklist, and an e-commerce tool.

1. Compfight

First up is compfight.  It searches Flickr, but lets you choose the license you want (commercial use or non-commercial).  The images display across the whole page (so you see more of them).  The dimensions pop up as you move your mouse over the photos (so you can tell right away if the picture is the right size for your needs).

2.  Veer

Next is veer. They’ve got illustrations, stock images, and typefaces.  Sure, there are lots of stock houses, but these photos tend to be more quirky and interesting than standard stock.  Images as low as $1. And you gotta love a site that has a typeface called “Strangelove.”

3.  Ideas

Need an idea?  Feeling kinda stumped. Try the inspiration generator. Type a word into the box and get photos, quotes, videos, bookmarks, songs, and tweets that match the word.

4.  Web launch checklist

Want to make sure you don’t mess any techy steps when you launch a web site? Or, want something you can pass on, without reinventing the wheel? Check out this web launch checklist. Fill in the blanks on the form and see if you’re good to go (or if you need to go back and recheck something).

5. E-junkie Shopping Cart

If you’re selling ebooks or videos or other services on your web site or blog, you’ll need a shopping cart. This is software that processes the orders, confirms payment, and sends a unique link to download the product. E-junkie works on both websites and blogs.

They also have an affiliate program, so you can have other people sell your stuff. I’ve set up one to sell my Instant Website Review ebook. Here’s the page on my site with instructions on how to become an affiliate, along with banners you can put on your site.

Have a great weekend! Happy Independence Day to those in the U.S. Fireworks for everybody! 🙂