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The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition

July 11, 2010 by SmallBiz-Resources.com · 5 Comments 

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition

For marketers, The New Rules of Marketing and PR shows you how to leverage the potential that Web-based communication offers your business. Finally, you can speak directly to customers and buyers, establishing a personal link with the people who make your business work. This one-of-a-kind guide includes a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the Internet to create compelling messages, get them in front of customers, and lead those customers into the buying process.A completely revised and updated edition of the BusinessWeek bestseller on effective, modern marketing and PR best practices The New Rules of Marketing and PR shows you how to leverage the potential that Web-based communication offers your business. Finally, you can speak directly to customers and buyers, establishing a personal link with the people who make your business work. This new second edition paperback keeps you up-to-date on the latest trends. New case studies and current exa

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What is the Point of Do-follow Links on Blogs?

The average piece of blog software – such as Blogger or WordPress – currently no-follows any links out from the blog.

The no-follow attribute stops the search engines from indexing the destination of those links or from passing any page rank from the blog to the site it links to.

However some bloggers choose to change those links to do-follow links where links from such blogs will help the sites linked to when it comes to search engine rankings.

So who is right, and what should you do?

Well firstly let’s look at the rationale behind these two differing trains of thought so we can tease apart whether these policies help or hinder your blog.

Quite early on blog commenting became a top spam method. Software was created that would allow you to submit thousands of junk comments (often simply saying things like “Great post!” followed by a link to your site) and spammers used these to generate vast numbers of links to junk sites. For a short while it worked and these spammers prospered but soon enough bloggers realised they were being taken for a ride and blog readers got sick of spam sites.

So to try and protect themselves from comment spammers, many chose to add the no-follow tag. This meant that even if a spammer *did* add a junk comment and link to their website, they wouldn’t gain anything as Google would ignore that link. While this does cut down on spam to a certain degree there are plenty of amateurs who don’t understand these concepts and so still continue to add junk comments.

The flipside of the problem is that some legitimate commenters started to post less. They were part of the community and took the time to add their own, high quality comments for two reasons. Sure, they wanted to contribute to the community, but they were also able to get something back (page rank) for their efforts.

When the page rank stopped flowing, many people stopped commenting and as a result a variety of blogs started to stagnate with only the blog owner adding content to the site.

And so it was that a small band of bloggers decided to bring back the do-follow comments to encourage back the legitimate commenters and instead use antispam plugins to fight against junk comments.

And on the whole this new system *does* work – though of course you are making a compromise. By using do-follow links you are building community around your site but losing pagerank as a result. It’s something of a gamble.

So what should you do at your site? Well my own suggestion would be to use do-follow links if your site is a blog focusing on blogging or making money online. These folks know about such things and your efforts will be duly rewarded with interesting comments.

However outside of these niches, I would continue to use no-follow links to keep away the spammers. Also, most non-internet marketing individuals don’t know the difference between the two types of links so therefore shouldn’t reduce their posting of comments at your blog. This means you get the best of all worlds – good pagerank (with no leak), plenty of comments, minimal spam and happy readers.

The most visited site for free merchant account advice is http://www.MerchantAccountForum.com and they have also produced a free ebook marketing guide available at http://www.EbookSalesAssistant.com

Top Email Marketing Blogs

Top Email Marketing Blogs

This article contains information on 3 of the top email marketing blogs. In no particular order, these blogs provide valuable commentary for critical challenges facing email marketers. Some content is suited for intermediate level marketers, while other posts will appeal to advanced email marketing practitioners.

1. http://email-marketing-strategies.com by Forest Bronzan

Overview: The Email Marketing Strategies blog provides analysis of email campaigns & strategies implemented by name-brand companies; mostly retail brands. The blog also provides tips and insight for a broad range of email marketing strategy.

About the Author (from the blog): Forest Bronzan is an internet marketing strategist and entrepreneur located in Redlands CA. Forest has extensive experience leading marketing and business development for international startups, along with developing strategic frameworks and deployment strategies for a wide range of email marketing programs.

2. www.banane.com/workblog by Anna Billstrom

Overview: The Adventures in Email Marketing blog covers a broad range of topics on email marketing, with additional discussion of SEM and SMM strategy.

About the Author (from the blog): I started this blog to talk about the issues and concerns surrounding ethical and effective email marketing. I’ve been focusing on email marketing since 1999. I have a background in OLAP datamart design, software development, integrated systems development, customer datamart modeling, and application integration. While I have done Web 2.0 and internet marketing consulting for startups, usually my contracts are with corporations that have large datasets.

3. http://blog.wordtothewise.com by Laura Atkins

Overview: The Word to the Wise blog has in depth discussion on a plethora of email marketing practices. Archived post topics range from authentication and deliverability to list management, feedback loops, and segmentation.

About the Author (from the blog): Laura Atkins is a founding partner of the anti-spam consultancy and software firm Word to the Wise. I have over seven years of experience in tracing Internet abuse and am a recognized leader in the anti-spam arena. At Word to the Wise, I advise clients on how to manage mailing risks, to respond to spam complaints, interact with ISPs, and navigate the ever changing and challenging world of email delivery. I also act as a neutral arbitrator during discussions with ISPs and blocklists.

David Willis is a marketing guru focused on research and online channels.

New E-Book “survey Creation Made Easy By Checkbox Survey Software”

How many badly branded, poorly organized, and just downright rotten online surveys have you received in the past year? If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably lost count. While our primary goal at Checkbox Survey Solutions is to create a powerful, easy to use, feature-rich online survey tool, we feel that it would be irresponsible to send you out into the online survey world armed only with the software.

Sure, we think our software is one of the best online survey tools out there. But without some background on creating effective surveys, it’s still just a tool. And that’s why we decided to create an e-book that combines our best advice on getting started with online surveys. The Checkbox Survey team has years of experience helping our customers create well-organized, beautifully branded surveys, all the while making the most of Checkbox’s powerful features and architecture. We’ve harnessed that knowledge to publish our first e-book, “Survey Creation Made Easy by Checkbox Survey Solutions.”

In the beginning of this book you will find our Top 12 Survey Creation Tips. These are basic guidelines that all survey creators can follow, regardless of the online survey tool they are using. They will help you get started and help you create effective surveys that maximize the quantity and quality of your responses. Following the Top 12 Tips, you will find a series of survey building tips and tricks that are more specific to Checkbox Survey. These tips arise from our “Did you know?” and Customer Support blogs and detail some of Checkbox’s lesser known features and answers to our customers’ FAQ’s.

To receive your free copy, simply go to http://customer.checkboxonline.com/ebook1.aspx and fill out the required contact information.

We hope you enjoy this e-book and that our tips help you create fantastic online surveys. If you’d like more information on Checkbox Survey, please contact our product team at sales@checkbox.com or call 866-430-8274 (Int’l 617-715-9605). To stay apprised of the latest Checkbox news, deals, and tips and tricks subscribe to our blog at www.checkbox.com/blog.

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