I have several hundred true blog followers to my website and they have been thirsty for knowledge on social media, search engine optimization and anything metrics – 30,000 page views to be exact.  

Therefore, I feel it necessary to provide the following links that represent the most clicked, viewed and downloaded blogs from my website for 2010 – just in case anyone needs these resources again. 

Top 2010 Blogs (ranked in order by page views) 

Staying Nimble: Social Media 2010 - According to several leading experts, social media has been the number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.  

Don’t Miss This One: Connecting Social Media and Email - I find it interesting that most organizations don’t realize that e-mail marketing is the original ‘backbone’ of social interaction and should always be part of the social mix.  Simply adding some ‘integrated’ content will aid in elevating your brand – not to mention ROI for your social campaigns. 

Get it here: Search Engine Optimization Blogs - Great post by Hubspot on a few dozen SEO blogs everyone should read or minimally have in your arsenal.

Social Media Resources You Can’t Live Without - Whether it’s starting a social media campaign, integrating social media into your advertising or simply setting up a Facebook fan page, it is always wise to seek out experts who have proven experience (and metrics) to help guide you in your social media initiatives. 

Social Analytics: The Next Frontier - Let’s face it folks, social analytics is a new frontier – not anything like the analytics and metrics tracking we’ve used for advertising, direct mail or other one-way channel marketing.

Get It Right The First Time: Web Metrics - Many organizations are obsessed with volume – measuring their web metrics strategy by how many web pages that were viewed or by how many people that have visited. In many cases, this type of information is meaningless as it is not directly linked to a web plan or strategy.  

Writing for Social Media - If you want consistent social media success, you have to understand what social media users crave. For social media content, that means understanding the type of content social media users want.

Your Entire Organization Benefits From Web Analytics - You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit?    

As we move forward in 2011, it will be fun to watch the exploding world of social media and how it will affect all channels in the marketing mix.  

Happy New Year to all my blog fans and a hearty welcome to all new visitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Ahh … the holidays are almost upon us. Just found a fantastic coupon website that personalizes by category AND provides an “Advice” tab for those looking for specific detail on deals – Savings.com.

Whether it’s shopping for a specific ‘online deal’ or store-by-store brand shopping, Savings.com has it all.  Like most, it provides RSS feeds or emails to you once your requested ‘deal’ is posted by another website. 

But again, the best part about this website is the enhanced personalization by visitor.

Check it out today – you have nothing to lose!

Happy Shopping!

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Website Magazine does an excellent job of providing content from a number of diverse strategists. Of particular interest is a recent post by Christopher Petix, President of Clash-Media on The World of Digital Marketing in 2010.  

The past couple of years have been all about squeezing as much Return on Investment as possible from every marketing effort.

As a result, advertisers and marketers have a new set of parameters and broad goals for establishing a campaign. The good news for these groups is that there are a number of tools and techniques available to help them achieve these goals.¹

The following are just some of the key points from this important and relevant post:

Social Media – social media will need to be part of the marketing mix from day-one. 

Measurement is key – advertisers must evolve the metrics they use to monitor campaigns.

Partnership structures – advertisers will need to work in tandem with digital marketers that execute their campaigns.

Use niche websites – smaller websites with targeted or specialized information can give a far more intense exposure than typical large heavy traffic websites with generic content.

Read the full post ...

In conclusion:

The year ahead will be one where advertising and marketing begin to pick up some serious steam. However, free-spending days are over.

This means that advertisers need to find new ways to show how well they are performing, and publishers need to prove to advertisers that they can identify new customers, engage with them and deliver ROI.¹

Best

Denice MacDonald

¹Sources: Christopher Petix, President of Clash-Media

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey recently gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture “Square” – a device that allows its users to make credit card payments through their cell phones.

Square is a card reader about one inch in length that attaches to the headphone socket of most cell phones. 

The device contains a magnetic strip reader that allows a user to swipe a card, which will then coordinate online with card issuers and banks through a mobile application on the user’s cell phone. 

Basically, the Square works very similarly to card swipers that you see in most retail stores.

The device is scheduled to be available for iPods and iPhones in March 2010. 

View the latest "Square" YouTube video from TechCrunch    

Sources: 

After Twitter, Comes Square - By Richard Neil Ilagan, The News Chronicle

Creator Reveals Square Mobile-pay Device - By Barry Neild, CNN

Best

Denice MacDonald

Online holiday retail sales will grow 8% this year to $44.7 billion, predicts Forrester Research Inc. That would represent a continued shift of shopping to the web, as the National Retail Federation has forecast total retail sales will decline 1% this holiday season.

So, before you go online to shop, check out these great 'coupon' websites that provide discounts and promo codes for top retailers like Old Navy, Target, Kohls and as well as computer giants such as Dell.   

RetailMeNot: Coupon Codes [Above]

FatWallet: Online Coupons 

DealCatcher: Free Online Coupons

MyCoupons.com: Grocery Coupons and Online Coupons

Deal of Day: Coupon Codes

The Bargainist: Coupons & Coupon Codes

Dealnews: Online Coupons 

Now - get out there and start shopping!

Best,

Denice MacDonald 

With the economy still influx and unpredictable, online marketers are taking advantage of other ways to make money: affiliate networks. 

If you’re new to this kind of thinking, affiliate marketing is basically an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing requires little, if any, start up costs, low risk and the opportunity for significant payback.

Most online marketers are familiar with top affiliate network giant Google AdSense -- a  free program that enables web site publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads and earn revenue from clicks. 

Here are a few top notch affiliate networks to begin the journey - each has a different model - one may be right for your organization. 

HydraNetwork.com

Hydra is the largest online advertising network where advertisers pay only for new customers, leads, or any other specific campaign result. The company generates millions of new customers for advertisers every month and helps publishers monetize ad inventory through its performance-based ad publishing platform. 

PepperJamNetwork.com

Pepperjam’s affiliate program management service includes affiliate & super affiliate recruitment, newsletter creation and dissemination, banner and landing page design, daily communication with affiliates, reporting, & any and all strategic direction needed for the program to meet benchmarks and success. 

ClickBank.com

Founded in 1998, ClickBank is the online retail outlet for over 10,000 digital product vendors and their 100,000 active affiliates. ClickBank makes a sale somewhere in the world every three seconds. Serving over 200 countries, ClickBank is consistently ranked as one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web. 

OfferWeb.com

Similar to the Google AdSense model, OfferWeb is a software program that allows you (The webmaster of your own site) to add banners and buttons to your website. Traffic comes to your site to look at your products and services and sees your "OfferWeb" banner and every time they click on your selected banner, you make money.  

Find the "Right-fit" Affiliate:

AffiliateScout.com

AffiliateScout.com is a comprehensive directory of affiliate programs that are organized in a way that allows you to find the most relevant advertisers for your web site. If you are looking for advertisers in your niche, Affiliate Scout can help you partner with those advertisers.

Best

Denice MacDonald