blog marketing and promotion - Articles - Zimbio

Tick-A-Too Review and Blessing

Tue, 20 Aug 2008 08:00:00 GMT

posted by BlessingsAbound

As stated above, here is our first review! Tick-A-Too is a one stop baby and tot shop featuring premier and posh products such as BabyLegs, Hotslings, Pedipeds, and Alex Toys to name a few. Not only does this boutique provide top notch products for babies and children but it also supports other mompreneurs by selling mommy invented and made in the USA items at competitive prices. Their extensive selection is cleverly handpicked to not only include the novelty but to also incorporate essential products for the everyday mom like feeding, potty training, and travel accessories.

Searching for a suitable baby shower gift or present for a new mother or maybe you are looking to update your own baby gear? Tick-A-Too has many gift ideas that won't break the bank and sure to touch any mom's heart. Check out the new baby bouquets as well as diaper cakes, blankets, and diaper bags. These items are sure to please!

Now I don't know about you, but as a stay at home mother of four, it's much more convenient to purchase what I need from the comfort of my own home and I'm happy to report that this online boutique not only provides unique and useful products that accomplishes this mission but also delivers exceptional customer service! My own experience at Tick-A-Too has been one of a kind. Every email that I've sent to Molly (Tick-A-Too's fine owner) is answered in prompt fashion and with much enthusiasm. Another merit to this store is their fast shipping at low prices and some of their products ship free. That is hard to beat!

Fast forward to the best part of this review: Molly at Tick-A-Too is graciously sponsoring a Designer Travel Wipes Case giveaway! I couldn't have discovered this splendid boutique without the help from Natalie at Red Sox Mommy who put it to my attention during her own Tick-A-Too review and giveaway. I was the lucky winner of my own travels wipe case shown here:

To win one of your very own stylish travel wipes case, you must visit Tick-A-Too and come back and tell me what pattern you'd choose if you're the winner and your favorite Bible Scripture verse. Want to gain multiple entries? You may gain one additional entry for each extra item you complete by:

1. Adding my button onto your sidebar.
2. Subscribing to my blog.
3. Subscribing to my feed.
4. Emailing two people about my giveaway and CCing them to me at my email (akblessingsabound[at]gmail.com).

That's a total of 4 extra chances to win!

Please leave a separate comment for each item you have completed stating that you have done so. I urge you to also supply your email with each of your entries so I'll be able to contact you easily if you're the winner. Please follow directions or you will be disqualified. This blessing is open to both bloggers and nonbloggers alike! You have from now until August 27th at 11:59 PM (Alaska time) to comment and be entered for a chance to win. I will randomly pick a winner and announce it here on my blog on August 28th and submit winner info to PRIZEYWinners! Last but not least, find out how you can get 10% off all their items here! So check Tick-A-Too out and get shopping!

Google Gotcha II:The Results

Sat, 21 Sep 2008 17:12:42 GMT

posted by Jpfarrell
Results from GoogleFight.com

In last week's article, "Google Gotcha: Viral Marketing", we postulated that thousands of people would hit Google to find the meaning of the term "flurge" or "flirj" or a variety of other spellings in order to get in on an inside joke from Saturday Night Live (SNL) broadcast by NBC the prior night.

Whether or not there is such a word (many alternatives, some not suitable for publication, have been suggested), SNL successfully executed a viral marketing campaign. The entertaining and instructive site GoogleFight.com reported this morning that a Google search for "flirj" found 12,800 web entries and "flurge" found 37,100 results on the web. A week ago this "word" was virtually unknown.

As a secondary source, our story last week has already gotten 355 hits, 48 of which came directly from Google or AOL searches and 227 came from other sites where I had posted links to this story. Another 47 hits were "direct," probably coming from subscribers to my site. The remaining 31 came from various secondary referrals.

The skit itself was tremendously successful for NBC and a number of others. YouTube reports getting more than 6 million hits showing various video versions of this skit. While some versions were taken directly from Saturday Night Live (which asked YouTube to remove them early in the week), others were taken from snippets broadcast on FoxNews and CelebTV.

What did we learn?
1. Original content, in this case the skit itself, drives internet traffic.
2. Critics of the content with strong positions on the web can derive immediate benefit by exploiting search engines.
3. Traffic flows to the aggregators, particularly those with independent credibility and high Google PageRanks. In this case, Wikipedia.org chose not to participate, but other wikis did.
4. Popular culture generates interest in web sites. In this case, most of the people who found "A Management Consultant @ Large" through this route are not part of the target audience of the site and are not likely to remain regular readers. However, those who eventually find these posts by searching for "viral marketing" are more likely to become regulars. In any event, the site's PageRank was certainly helped.

To see the segment from the Saturday Night Live broadcast of 9-13-08, click here.

To learn more about our work in consulting, read about our Practice or check out our Case Studies

©2008 by JP Farrell & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Selling Professional Services

Sun, 22 Sep 2008 20:52:46 GMT

posted by Jpfarrell
A review of SCOTUSBLOG

Providers of professional services, including lawyers, consultants, accountants and doctors, face a uniquely awkward sales challenge. Discouraged or prevented by law or practice from conspicuously flogging their services, most market their services through bone-dry websites. Surprisingly few have begun to realize the potential of the blogs to help them make more personal, but unobtrusive, contact with prospective clients. An interesting exception is the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, a US law firm with 700 professionals and 12 offices.

Their traditional website at www.akingump.com with a reported Google PageRank of 6, draws an estimated 5100 visitors per month. That site lists their service areas and offices, provides white papers, supports recruiting, and highlights company news.

However, the firm also publishes one of the better professional services blogs, www.scotusblog.com, which also has a Google PageRank of 6, and draws about 19,000 visitors monthly, according to Quantcast.com. “SCOTUS” means “Supreme Court of the United States” and the blog is an authoritative source of information of interest to anyone following that court. Divided into sections called “commentary and opinion”, “new filings”, “orders and opinions”, “multimedia” and “term tracker”, the blog leaves little doubt that this firm knows the Supreme Court and practices before it frequently. The featured commentators are pictured in the right-hand margin, with accompanying links for emailing them. The tone of their posts is authoritative but not stodgy, sometimes speculative, always interesting. For example, in the post “Wild Opinion Speculation” from June 23, 2008 one of the authors surmises that Justice Scalia will be writing an important upcoming opinion:

It does look exceptionally likely that Justice Scalia is writing the principal opinion for the Court in Heller – the D.C. guns case. That is the only opinion remaining from the sitting and he is the only member of the Court not to have written a majority opinion from the sitting. There is no indication that he lost a majority from March. His only dissent from the sitting is for two Justices in Indiana v. Edwards. So, that’s a good sign for advocates of a strong individual rights conception of the Second Amendment and a bad sign for D.C.

A post with that kind of immediacy must surely be designed to attract the attention of the media, who will have no trouble finding experts at the firm to interview.

The blog directs readers back to white papers on www.akingump.com and also links to a new sister site, SCOTUSwiki.com, a reference site that "features pages maintained by many regular SCOTUSblog contributors, top law students, and leading experts in various legal fields."

What does this effort bring to the firm?

The blog is a quick, interesting read that attracts both a general audience and potential clients, collaborators, recruits and reporters. It has a kind of personality and newsiness that keeps people coming back frequently for a few minutes at a time. It personalizes the experience of meeting the firm in a completely non-threatening way.

For potential clients, it is the written equivalent of speed-dating, except the prospect never has to tell the blog “No”.©2008 by JP Farrell & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Double Your Search Traffic

Fri, 30 Aug 2008 19:22:34 GMT

posted by moonviper

If your website is already ranking in the top Google results for your profitable keywords, you can double your website listing and traffic by creating and ranking another similar web page. So, instead of just one listing in the search results Google will return two listings for your website. This page may contain the product reviews, customers’ testimonials, product editions, editor’s picks, and some other information.

To get that second page listed within the Google results, link to it heavily from other pages of your website. Google will automatically attach it as an indented result next to your first listing. See an example of a double website listing below.

If internal links do not help the new page rank in the search engine, you may need to build links to it from external sites as well.

When it comes to link building, traditional link building methods such as directory submission, article submission, press releases, reciprocal linking, blog commenting and some other are great. That’s what almost all webmasters do for solid long-term results.

But sometimes when you’re at the beginning of your link building campaign, you may want to quickly get a couple of quality “DoFollow” links. With all that said, I’d like to share with you a couple of quick “DoFollow” link building opportunities for your new web page:

Post on educational blogs. You can search for blogs set up on trusted academic domains and leave a relevant comment. Many of those blogs may be NoFollow but not all. You can enter a search query like below into Fast Blog Finder Gold Edition to search for .edu blogs in your niche. Then filter the blogs by the Type to show only DoFollow links and read the posts. If you feel you can add something to the conversation, leave your comment to get a DoFollow link in return.

Example:"some keywords" inurl:".edu"

Setup a profile on Twitter. In your profile settings you can type a couple of links into the Bio field, for example, www.yourdomain2.com, www.yourdomain2.com, etc. Note that if you only setup an account, that will do no good. But if you are an active user, those links may send some traffic to your website and give some SEO benefit.
Post on LinkedIn Answers website. You can setup a user account on LinkedIn Answers, search for questions relevant to your market niche and post answers. Be serious and use your regular user name, write a helpful answer and include a link to your website or blog for more information.
Use DoFollow Social Bookmarking Sites. There are a number of social bookmarking sites where the links located on the first page are “DoFollow”. You can start with less popular websites that require fewer votes to get to the front page.

Here are some of “DoFollow” social bookmarking sites:

Furl (PR7)
Backflip (PR6)
Bibsonomy (PR6)
LinkaGoGo (PR6)
Mister-Wong (PR6)
Raw Sugar (PR6)
Spurl (PR6)
Buddy Marks (PR5)
Jumptags (PR5)
MyJeeves / Ask (PR5)

It’s a good idea to add a “Bookmark It” button to your website. This will make it easy for your readers to vote for your site in social bookmarking services. You can use this free Social bookmarking tool to generate a code with the “Bookmark It” image and a link to a list of 80+ social bookmarking services.

Example of the code:
<a href="http://www.expertarticles.com/bookmark/?url=http://www.fastblogfinder.com&
title=Fast Blog Finder">Bookmark with Your Social Network</a>

You place the “Bookmark It” button on your website or blog. By clicking just one button your readers will be able to vote for your website in dozens of social bookmarking sites.

Note that these tricky tactics cannot compete with general link building methods and I do not want you to focus on them as your primary methods to get links. I just want you to keep them in mind as unconventional link building ideas that sometimes may be helpful to kick start your link building process.

Please, share your thoughts in comments.

Beat the Kitchen Blues with Sassy Apron! (Closed)

Thu, 29 Aug 2008 08:00:00 GMT

posted by BlessingsAbound
Why can't functional also be fashionable? Bustling about the kitchen can be a tedious chore and sometimes unglamorous but you can remedy that with a saucy apron from Sassy Apron! Apron extraordinaire, Lana, is the hip designer of these distinctively beautiful and vintage-inspired aprons. She creates her own patterns and uses the 1920's flapper dresses and hats, the 1950's New Look Dior skirts, and the 1960's polka dots and mod dresses for her inspiration! Lana's line isn't only partial to aprons but she also offers pretty linen tea towels that match her fresh aprons that's sure to dress up any kitchen. Any purchase of an apron with matching linen towel can be customized to provide a towel loop on that apron for no extra charge and the towel ships for free! And you thought this was a great deal already but I'll let you in on another treat. If you buy an apron as a gift, she will gift wrap and add a card with your message and send it to your desired address on the house! Gift giving made easy!

These aprons are ideal while entertaining or getting normal every day work done. Go ahead and knead dough, bake cookies, and scrub dishes in style! There are so many charming designs, it will be hard to choose just one to romp around the kitchen in. There's surely one there that will fit anyone's taste. I know I can't resist the sweet vintage designs and I am a big fan of wearing aprons. Here are a couple of my personal favorites:
Want to win a chic apron of your very own to put some oomph in your domestic life?

Thanks to Lana of Sassy Apron, you can! She has kindly offered to give one of our lucky readers a chance to win one of her Sassy Aprons pictured here:

In order to be eligible to win this adorable Sweet Tooth Sassy Hostess Apron, you must first visit her Etsy shop and then comment on your favorite style/design and if you'll be keeping this to yourself or giving it to someone special.

To earn extra entries, you can:

1. Add my button to your side bar.

2. Subscribe to my blog.

3. Blog about this giveaway and link back to it.

4. Email about the giveaway to two people and CC back to me at akblessingsabound[at]gmail.com.

5. Advertise your blog on my blog through Entrecard.

6. Fave my blog on Technorati.

Please leave a separate comment for each item you have completed stating that you have done so. I urge you to also supply your email with each of your entries so I'll be able to contact you easily if you're the winner. Please follow directions or you will be disqualified. This blessing is open to both bloggers and nonbloggers alike! You have from now until September 4th at 11:59 PM (Alaska time) to comment and be entered for a chance to win. I will randomly pick a winner and announce it here on my blog on September 5th and submit winner info to PRIZEYWinners!Blessing open to US mailing addresses only.