infinite42

Are you proud of your social bookmarks? This might seem like a strange question, but bear with me.

Here’s an interesting question to ask yourself: would you share your bookmarks with a friend? How about 100 friends? How about 1000?

If the answer is no then don’t worry. It doesn’t make you a bad person. There are some good reasons why it can happen so read on…

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us and stumbleupon allow internet users to vote on their favorite sites. You can even start your own based on Pligg. If these bookmarked sites get lots of votes (or tags, or diggs, or whatever you want to call them) they will make it to the top and get noticed. This is web2.0 in action.

How do you share your bookmarks? It’s very easy to do this. On most of these sites you have a profile page which stores all of the tags that you have created. Sharing or promoting your bookmarks is just a case of sending people to this page with a link.

So what would 100 people think of your bookmarks? Would they think you are a good Digger or a great citizen on StumbleUpon? Are you consistently tagging interesting sites that are relevant to the category that you choose? If so then the answer to the first question should be yes!

If the answer is no, it might be that:

1. You are bookmarking for the sake of it
2. You just Stumble your own stuff to get traffic. If you do, and it’s good stuff, then this seems OK to me. It can look a little self-centered though
3. You are bookmarking to try to raise your profile

Here’s an easier question: if you don’t feel happy sharing all your bookmarks with friends then how about sharing a subset of your bookmarks? Maybe they are tagged with the word “proud”, or “worth sharing”. Many of the bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, allow you to use tags.

If you can consistently show that you are finding interesting pages that are relevant to your group of online friends then you will get a good reputation and people will start to look at what you are up to. This leads to more visitors and more traffic to your own sites. That’s a good thing, and means you can say yes to the original question.

I’m a newbie on Squidoo so I was overjoyed today when I earned $0.07 in royalties!!

It’s a great place for building focussed content and promoting it. Squidoo rates pretty high in Google and your pages can appear high up in search results.

It’s pretty easy to set up a lens and build some content, but making it successful and getting a good lens rank is a little bit harder. You can make some money if visitors click on the AdSense links which feature on your lens. This is what happened today!

I do know a Giant Squid and you can check out some of her lenses at EverythingMouse on Squidoo. A Giant Squid award is given by the folks at Squidoo to someone who creates top notch lenses (and lots of them). I’ll be following her lead as I develop more lenses and get started on promoting them.

The Google Search Engine can take a while to adjust the PageRank of your site. Here’s some alternative activities to think about while you’re waiting (none of them including meditation):

1. Obsessively check your website stats

2. Book a round-the-world-tour

3. Go on your round-the-world-tour

4. Set up an AdWords campaign

5. Obsessively check your AdWords clicks and costs

6. Keep chasing links to your site

7. Watch an entire season of American Idol

What do you like to do while you’re waiting for Google? Leave a comment or you can Vote for your own ideas on my Google Alternatives Squidoo Lens

The End. Fin.

This is my final post. After today there will be no more updates to this blog.

How does this make you feel? A little bit sad, maybe? It probably makes you feel like checking some of my previous posts. You’d better take a look before it stops and you lose the chance to benefit from all the great wisdom…

The truth is this isn’t my last post, but this demonstrates a technique that is often used to raise interest in a product, or a website.

“Available for one week only”

“$10 now but the price will be $30 after 15th May”

…and so on. I’m sure you are familiar. If you use this technique on your website then remember that you need to be authentic. If you’re pulling the product then don’t put it back 2 weeks later. If you do your customers may get angry and they may tell other potential customers that you are a fake.

Also don’t forget that this works for the short term only. “Available for one more year” doesn’t really have the same pull, does it?

I hate the term autoresponder.

The term is used a lot for systems that automate email marketing. It implies a system that just, well, responds to customer inquiries. This has its uses, of course. If a visitor to your site fills out a support request then it’s helpful to send a quick automatic reply saying “we will reply to your request soon”. However if you base your entire email marketing campaign around such a one-way interaction then you are ignoring valuable conversations that you can have with your customers.

Many autoresponders will take your signed up customer and schedule a set of emails to be delivered to them. You can choose when these emails are sent - let’s say once a week for a whole year. The problem here is that you’re sending every customer down the same path through the same set of emails. We all know that every customer is different. What works for Joe might not work for Jim. Also does the system allow you to get feedback from your customers and adjust the scheduled messages?

It’s time to stop thinking about autoresponders and start looking at email systems that allow you to tailor your conversations to the individuals that you have on your contact list.

Are your website messages consistent?

On the way to the mall to look at an iPod Touch the other night Chris Daughtry’s Over You was playing on STAR 101.3. I like the song and it was good to listen to on a sunny spring evening.

Playing with the iPod in the Apple Store I popped up iTunes and there was the track again. Of course I listened to it and it sounded great.

Driving to the airport today while thinking about this post I noticed a billboard by the freeway with Daughtry’s face on it and STAR 101.3. Then I saw an ad for the iPod.

Can you achieve this amount of consistency in your website and online presence? Before you stop me and say “wait just a second, you’re asking us to control the airwaves now?” - let me explain. You have many different places and channels where your online business gets seen. Are you doing your best to make sure that your message looks the same across all these?

1. Is your blog integrated into your site or bolted on with a completely different look and navigation?
2. Do all your pages have a similar look and feel and consistent navigation?
3. Do your autoresponder emails use the same style as the website?
4. Do they come from the same domain as the website or from a provider with a different address?
5. Do the emails work with the message of your website?
6. Do you provide support and is this as friendly and helpful as the website?
7. If you talk to customers on the phone are you as helpful as your website says you are?
8. Do your online adverts share a consistent message or do they just grab visitors (and disappoint them when they reach your web pages)?

You may not have the marketing reach of iTunes and the airwaves but you have a number of channels that you can control. If you can make your messages consistent then they build on each other and reinforce each other and provide a better overall experience for the customer.

My experience with the iPod was enhanced by seeing and hearing consistent, familiar messages in places that I wasn’t expecting. Because it made the experience better it made it more likely that I would buy the iPod (I did).

The only thing I haven’t done yet is download the song from iTunes