Just nosing around tags and  tagging I digg up some great info

I was looking through my comments and stumbled across a great blog for folks who are putting together online profiles and want to really get into the knowings of how to build a better blog.

And yep I realize that actually there is a blogging program that claims that name. This is another fellow blogger just giving out quality content. Well done to Blogsessive , I had an awesome time over there this morning

Anyway I digress … Here’s A Neat Internet Marketing Technique outlined below

Although tags are far from perfect, marketers should, nevertheless, be using them to keep a finger on the pulse of the American public.

Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, company or space. These are living focus groups that are available for free, 24/7. Folksonomy sites can be also be carefully used to unleash viral marketing campaigns – with a caveat. Marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting the link/photos and avoid spamming the services.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) was one chosen to showcase the world-famous Exhibition for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. HMNS quickly realized that while the exhibit was expected to generate a great deal of interest, it didn’t have a lot of appeal for their core audience. The success of the exhibition, therefore, would rest in how it was marketed.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science quickly called in Spur Digital to help reach the targeted demographic audience and generate interest in the Exhibit. HMNS was, also, hoping to acquire new patrons and members to further their future revenue.

Spur digital worked with HMNS to identify the target market…

The and developed an integrated online media plan to reach those audiences.

The campaign featured an online contest that was marketed through targeted online media outlets including relevant Web sites, Search Engines and third party E-mail lists. Viral marketing was an important component of the campaign, so Spur developed an innovative strategy to get people to refer their friends.

Spur Picked out the target audience…

Identified as males 18 to 34 years old who were fans of action and fantasy films, frequent video game players and movie renters, tech-savvy who generally didn’t hang out at museums.

Based on this information, Spur chose search engine advertisements that would accompany specific search words, dedicated e-mail advertisements, sponsored e-mail advertisements, banner ads on web sites targeted toward the desired audience, and e-mails to the HMNS list.

Did it work? You bet! The results were excellent. The impact of the viral marketing effort was astounding – over 23% of registrants came originated from the Tell-A-Friend feature. The direct marketing efforts yielded impressive results as well.

In total, the 12 week, locally-targeted online campaign yielded more than 2 million targeted impressions, 40,000 unique visits, almost 12,000 and 6,000 invitations sent by friends at a cost per action of less than $3.00. These contributed to the record attendance of almost 100,000 over 3 months.

Learn how to run Locally Targeted Marketing Campaigns.

For more information visit Smart Business Ideas

“Folksonomies” – a New Viral Marketing Tool

A new consumer phenomenon is called “tagging” or “folksonomies” (short for folks and taxonomy).

Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.

Here’s how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us – a bookmark sharing site – and Flickr – a photo sharing site – consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.

For instance, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag “iPod.” These images are now not only visible under the individual user’s iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword.

Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled “iPod.”

Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search. Type the word “blogs” into Google and it can’t tell if you are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already getting on to the folksonomy train. They are rolling out tag-like structures to help users more easily locate content that’s relevant to them.

For more information visit How to start business online and Which Business to start online from home

great advice about list building for free

Des from 199Media, another  WA members area sent me the info even before I got round the email from Squidoo!

I haven’t been around for long enough to be ‘slapped’ looks like we have a bit of shaping of our lenses to do.

9 Seems to be a magic number to avoid when it comes to links  pointing to a single affiliate site (NO over promotion) so check out your squids and make sure they don’t have more than 9 links pointing to any of you affiliate links.

There is going to be plenty of info on Squidoo anyway… If your a member of squidoo you will have an email in your inbox today. If not here are the changes in summary:

1. No Spam.

It’s simple: Squidoo Squidoo tance against spam. That’s staying the same, and to be real, getting even more strict. If you actively spam people with your Squidoo lenses (by email, in blog comments, by stalking and harassing people on Twitter, by tricking people with the content in your lenses, and more) The hand of squidoo will lock your entire account.

>2. No more X-rated or Porn lenses

If you read in between the lines I deduce that the X-rated lenses dont really contribute to the community or the image, thats my take. ” supporting X-rated pages no longer makes sense, and it invites more spam and empty traffic and wasted overhead than anything. Find out more about why we’re making this very hard decision, and what it means for your X-rated lenses.”

3. No Junk Topics from the “Squid Don’t” List

This scould be one to look out for … Lenses on free movie downloads. Toenail fungus cures. Lose belly fat now, promotions. Reverse Phone Lookup 4U. You know junk when you see it. And lots more examples.

Unforunately, topics like these are overwhelmingly conditioned and proven to attract spammers. Don’t bother with topics like these. There’s plenty of incredible stuff to write about and recommend online without having to go into squid war.

4. A new limit on overly promotional lenses

One for the Marketers, I say pay close attention to this! “Sales lenses far too often turn into junk lenses, as described by the relentless number of outbound links to the same exact domain. Being overly promotional rarely works. “Buy here buy here buy here!” never does.”

If you have more than 9 links to the SAME domain on a single lens, your lovely lens will get locked for review …Of course will still have domains that are whitelisted out of this (meaning, you can have as many outbound links to them as you like), more detail here as well as sites that are blacklisted (meaning, even a single link to that domain will get your lens locked).

What now? First, take a deep breath.

Squidoo won’t be starting these new policy changes until July 20, 2009 or later. So there is more than a month to review your lenses to make sure we’re all towing the line… and playing by the rules.

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