Loopt Your Business

Loopt is a location based social service which is also accessible on more than 100 mobile phones systems and connects users with their friends.

It’s visually displaying their availability and location and on a map. Loopt is is currently used by about 3 million people and the number is increasing as they expands to more cities

As a business you can tap into Loopt’s location data to offer targeted promotions.

Users can review and recommend of shops and restaurants. Furthermore they are able to find events of their interest in their area.

For Example: The New York based B.R. Guest restaurant chain is sending out messages special promotions and discounts to Loopt users located near f any of their restaurants.

As marketers you should explore the possibilities of interacting and promoting your businesses through Loopt and monitoring posts and user reviews.

Some references:

• Socialmedia » Why Facebook Won’t Buy Loopt
• Facebook Checks-In On Loopt
• Paul Chaney: Loopt Opts for Expert Reviews vs. Crowd-Sourced …
• Google Buzz Could Have Dominated Location. (And Snuck Up On …
• Mobile Content Bits: Tapulous’ Riddim Ribbon; Loopt Gets Local Ads …

Let me know what you think and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

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American Airlines Email Marketing The Wrong Way

Today I have read a blog post of David Meerman Scott how he has been approached by AA (American Airlines) online by email marketing.

To keep a long story short, they approached him the totally wrong way. They did not take into account his member status and nothing about his membership at all, even they had all the information needed to personalize this (opt in) email campaign down to the size of his shoes, theoretically. But they did not!

AA took the short and easy way and did not leverage the information they had from him an s valued long year customer.

Instead of this they pitched him with an unpersonal dump email and indirectly showed him that he is not valued by them.

Today you can segment customers with email systems out there which are able to personalize a campaign down to the size of your shoes.

I think they simply did not care that there are differences in email marketing. And to do it right, they have to have a deeper understanding what email marketing is and how to use it. This takes effort which they did not invested this time.

I am looking forward to read from their next attempt and I hope David Meerman Scott will post it as well.

I am also curious if AA monitors social media and blogs and if the next email campaign will reflect David’s blog post.

Let’s see what will happen.

Read the full article here: http://www.webinknow.com/2010/03/american-airlines-stupid-email-marketing-practices.html

Do you have similar experiences like this one with email marketing, simply tell me by commenting below.

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Abusive Apps Will Damage Your Credibility

Twitter is very popular and there are a lot of third party provider about 50,000 apps, which are out there and offer services to make your twitter live a little bit easier.

99.9% of the services which access our apps are trusted web services and can help us with our reputation because they help us to spread our content through the web.

But we have to take care to sort out the one who are careless with our permissions, even abusive and to name them so that anybody knows and is warned to register with them.

Here is a recent article what has happen with a good friend of mine from another-blogger.com

His twitter account has actually been abused from a twitter third party app provider.
Read his full article here:  Change Your Twitter Password And Save Your Reputation

Trust and reputation has become the most important asset online!

Therefore we all have to take big care about to whom we give our permission to access our online apps.

Also we have to take care of our online friends to help protect them, and if we see unusual behaviour to inform and to warn them that anybody is abusing their trusted name.

Do you actually monitor your most important assets, your trust and reputation?

Here are some free tools to do so:

One good service to help to protect your reputation and to monitor what’s going on is Google Alerts [http://www.google.com/alerts]; where you can set your name, your domain name and further keywords to be monitored and you get an email when one of the selected keywords is mentioned online.

Another great source is Google Blog Search [http://blogsearch.google.com/]; here you can type in your name, your domain name and further keywords to see what’s coming up.

Let me know what you think.

Did you experienced same issues with third party providers from twitter, just let me know by commenting on this entry?

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How to Get Started If Nobody Knows You?

Internet marketing is becoming a business mediator between business organizations and customers all over the world. Internet marketing is referred to as symbol for global marketing as well as Globalization.

Many companies are adopting Internet marketing because it is a place where you can meet the people who are interested in your products, gives an opportunity to learn more about their requirements and needs and improve feedback on your products. Thus it helps in developing your company brand image from nothing to something really important.

Main Activities required to get started if nobody knows you

Plan your strategies:
First step is to plan what are the various ways for introducing your products, where you will get your targeted customers, what will be the expected return on investment by applying a particular strategy, how to design your website i.e., whether it is for introducing your products or providing service or for both?

Identifying Marketing Strategies:
Next step is to plan the various strategies you are going to apply. These should be applied to reach your targets easily and so strategies should be clear and targets should be predetermined. One should identify the goals of Internet marketing you are trying to achieve either it is improving brand image if you are developing a company or getting recognized in your field if you are person trying to develop yourself.

Identifying Market:
Next step is to identify the market for your products. It is critical in the success of the products. Best way is to identify keyword niche for your products and start advertising in similar websites which are relevant for your website and products.

Make your website recognized in Search Engines:
Once you have developed your website, made it user friendly and developed sufficient infrastructure, then submit your website to all major search engines. This helps visitors to find your website very easily.

Submit your website in Social Communities:
Submit your website in Social Communities like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Create your own fanpage in face book, start your group in LinkedIn and start building followers in Twitter. Start social media marketing and find your success grow in.

Check ROI for your organization:
Though using social media networks is having cheaper budgets, it is better to calculate ROI for your marketing strategies and identifying the best marketing strategy. One should also indentify which is the marketing strategy that has created more awareness for public regarding your organization.

For more on how to get recognized in Internet and social media, go through the links given below:
Online marketing where to start
How to start marketing your online business on a shoestring budget
How to start your own advertising internet marketing online businesses for success in future

Let me know what you think and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

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Did You Start Your Grog Yet?

A new service has appeared out there which wants to help you to Crowd source Your Content.

Grogger: Grogger enables you to publishing your blog content through Grogs–”group blogs” and enables you to crowd source their content.

One of the most interesting features is the ability to ‘Absorb All Your Topic’s Content’ means you can import content from your blog, Twitter or any of your RSS feeds. You can include your RSS feeds and make it an autopilot. One more place where can get seen, for free.

Moreover Grogger helps you to transform your users to publishers with easy to use publishing tools. Users can contribute and interact with you and each other. This can give your blog exposure an additional powerful boost on the web.

With Grogger you can boost your users’ engagement and publish the best content of your contributors and increase the quality and quantity of your content.

Actually Grogger is in public alpha. When you try to register you get an info that you will be emailed when more seats become available. Go for it and be an early bird, its useful and its free, so give it a try.

Let me know what you think and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

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One Week With Google Buzz Now

For now I am about one week in Google Buzz and like some other people I don’t think that Google Buzz goes to overtake Twitter for now. Moreover I think Google Buzz will complement the social media world in a great maybe different way.

When you have accustomed that Google Buzz is making your Gmail account a little bit messy and learned to handle it than it can become a nice place to make new friends.

I hope Google will implement some administration features in the near future to make it an easier to filter and administer messages, etc…

And an old friend named SPAM appeared very quickly on Google Buzz. I have unfriend them and now I got more good buzzes into my account.

In my opinion Google Buzz is a nice tool, no Twitter replacement for now but we will see what the future brings.

I am personally very excited about it because it opens a new channel to make connections, spread information and I am curious what Google further steps are in social media?!

Related Google Buzz post.

Happy buzzing!

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Use Google Buzz NOW And Promote Your Content!

These days thousands of discussions appear online about the use of Google Buzz for marketing purposes.

I have included Google Buzz on my page the same day it was made public and I use Google Buzz to include my content like tweets, Flickr photos and video for now. We will see which features will be added in the near future which open further opportunities to spread your content through the web.

For me it looks like that this, what we actually see is only the top of the ice berg and the 70% is still under water and not visible at the moment.

Google’s interest in social media will drive the development and evolution of Google Buzz. There is doubt!

An important fact is the inclusion of social status updates into Google search results and their launch of social search and not forget to mention the Google Buzz on phone which can help to get better found online and mobile. All Gmail accounts have been updated automatically and all android phones as well.

Nobody should underestimate Google’s desire to position in social media. Social media means high quality user data for marketing and this means a lot of revenue potential.

I think this is one key point which drives the future of Google Buzz and also empowers your benefit to position you self, your products and your services where our potential customers are, directly in front of them, with the help of Google, at no cost!

Under this circumstances mentioned above I think you should step into Google Buzz to claim you position.

It is simple to do this!

1. Go to your Gmail account and setup your Google Profile
2. Add your favourite sites, RSS feeds etc….
3. Install this Google Buzz Button on your WordPress blog (this one which you can see below) to get your content Buzzed.
4. Activate Google Buzz.
5. Invite your friends, step into a 2way conversation and build your follower ship.

Happy buzzing!

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8 Steps To Promote Your Blog To 60 Million For FREE

Discover eight easy steps how to use the 60 million user potential of LinkedIn to bring your free targeted traffic to your blog.

LinkedIn is a business oriented social network and it’s mainly used for professional networking. Today it was announced that LinkedIn has reached 60 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide.

What makes LinkedIn valuable for your marketing as blogger?

LinkedIn has an applications platform that allows other apps to be embedded within your member profile. For example, there is a WordPress and a TypePad application that allows you to display your latest blog entries within your profile.

Imagine how effective this can be for your exposure. You have your finger directly on 60 million potential visitors to your blog for free.

If you are still not a member of LinkedIn and have a blog about a business related niche than you should consider becoming one very quickly.

The eight easy steps to get free traffic from LinkedIn:

1. You simply signup on LinkedIn
2. Complete your profile
3. Associate your blog with one of the above mentioned apps (WordPress / TypePad)
4. Getting associate to LinkedIn Groups: As you can not invite people on LinkedIn directly, you should start by getting associated to LinkedIn Groups first. Look out for groups in your niche topic and request to be added and subscribe to their updates.
5. Get Friends on LinkedIn: After you are added to a group and subscribed to their updates, you will receive updates every time when somebody posts a discussion from the Group you are member of. Go and visit the discussion and if you have an educated comment, leave it there and invite the person you have commented on their discussion or comment themselves to connect with you.
6. Repeat these steps daily and your friends list will grow day by day.
7. Take care to be focus on quality friends not on the count!
8. Maintain your new relationships, step into (2Way) conversation.

Let me know what you think and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

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5 Tips for Productive Tweeting

Productive Twitter marketing is one of the most successful Internet marketing strategies to gain lot of followers and improve brand image of company online.

Twitter is a social media networking site which consists of lots of millions of users who can publish their tweets which can have a maximum size of 140 characters. Most companies online use twitter to market their products.

To make new customers, they use productive tweeting which improves followers as well spread brand image across the world.

How to make use of Tweet?

A tweet consists of 140 words length of information of your tweet can be added. The tweet should be able to attract the followers with good productive content and building relationship with them in friendly manner than commercial processes.

Twitter marketing acts like a viral marketer in the form of re-tweeting. Tweets written should have valuable information which should make customers feel to spread them as they spread valuable information.

5 Tips for productive tweeting

Productive tweeting is only possible if one understands the usage of twitter. It is important to follow some valuable suggestions and comments for making productive tweeting.

1. Learning makes you expert:

Learn from the experts in tweeting. See how they utilize the tweets. Learn from the strategies they use to build good followers. There are few twitter experts who have several re-tweets for their tweets. Learn how they tweet.

2. Responding to the other follower tweets is essential:

Though social media networking sites are being used for business by increasing the number of followers it is also essential to respond to the other tweets of the followers and this builds a good relationship. But this should not be like spamming their inbox with thank you messages.

3. Your tweets should make people follow you rather than you following people:

Don’t send message with your affiliate links or sending thank you messages for following. These people follow you because they know you. Send them some information that will be useful for them. This makes them more interested for your tweets. Otherwise they simple stop following you immediately.

4. Build a potential network of followers:

This is nothing but people should be able to discuss and follow your tweets regularly hence you could be able to build a potential network of people who really interested on your tweets. Hence it is necessary for you to build potential followers than blind followers. By this you can gain a pool of customers for your products and your business.

5. Try to help other through Twitter:

You can help other twitter users by responding to their tweets. Use hash tags when tweeting which helps your readers about the tweet. This also helps people who search for similar information.

Getting Productive and creative with twitter
Twitter benefits

Making Tweets reproductive through group tweeting

Watch this video below to get an idea how and where to find people which you can invite to your Twitter who could be interested in the things you have to offer.

Let me know what you think and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

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3 Tips for Designing An Effective Website

Content is king there is no doubt about this content is what drive traffic to our blog. However there is another aspect of our blog that we need to pay attention to.

The Design whether or website is for fun or money making we need to give some thoughts to the design of the website. This can make or break the success of the website.

Before you digest this post I must remind you that I am not a professional web designer. I am just a simple self proclaim blogger who shares his experience and knowledge with his fellow bloggers.

Here are some simple tips you need to remember when creating an effective design.

(1) Structure: The format serves as a good design making sure that your content is well organized. Your readers will appreciate and understand this. This can be done by using wireframes and grids. This will give your website a consistent look and feel and also saves you design time.

(2) Content: This simply applies to the information that will make your subscribers easily understand what you are saying and what your website or blog is about. Mainly in order to satisfy your readers you have to come up with a content that will provide them all the information they need. Having well said and explained information will help you to turn out your readers into subsequent subscribers. Or if you are selling a product to make them become buyers.

(3) Navigational structure: This is very important as this allows the users to navigate their way through the entire website. A visitor should never find it difficult to find their way around your blog. All pages should lead back to your main page. Your readers should never be lead away from your website or get trapped while trying to navigate around it.

When designing your website always design with your visitors in mind. Although it is important that we design to be found by the search engines. The user must always be at the forefront of the project.

Another good idea is to limit the amount of graphics. A high amount of graphics can make your website loading slower. This can be a turn of for your visitors.

Follow these tips and if you find them very difficult there are always the possibilities of hiring a professional web designer.

Now it’s your turn feel free to share your comments and suggestion your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Gary Lawood popular known on the internet as Lawmacs and his blog is Lawmacs.com. He is a full time dad and full time employee working as a Retail Unit Manager with a diploma in computer studies.
You can follow Lawmacs on Twitter @lawmacs and on Facebook.

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