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Marketers must adopt an entirely new strategy -- more than that, an entirely new mindset. They must get away from trying to create new desires in people, trying to push and force themselves on people, trying to control people. Instead, find a more natural way. Find out what people want, and then give it to them. Offer them value, and they will appreciate that. Be a resource. Give things away. Don't force -- let them come to you, because of all the value you offer. Here's how:

Bounce rate has these attributes: 1) It is really hard to misunderstand. It measures the number of people who landed on your site and refused to give you even one single click! 2) It is available in most web analytics tools, including our own Google Analytics. 3) It is quick and easy to use. Bounce rate will help you understand where and how to make changes on your website in under an hour.

Great tips from Google on reducing your website bounce rates

With floods of e-mail arriving every hour, most people are ruthless about deleting anything they even suspect won't interest them. Not only that, they're also just as likely to report unwanted e-mails as spam as they are to delete them. So if you're not writing compelling subject lines that get the e-mails opened, all your hard work is lost. Here are five tips for writing effective e-mail subject lines that can easily double the open (and click-through) rates on your next e-mail.

Great post from Michael Fruchter on getting started in Social Media... Everything from personal branding to blogging to Twitter

Getting started with social media, whether for personal or professional use, requires learning the basic fundamentals. Social media is more than just creating a blog or Twitter account. The tools are great and give us big advantages, but they are simply extensions of how we engage and participate in social media, they are not the answers. The social in social media is all about the human element. This post touches upon 40 key elements to aid your success.

This fall, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt released the 2nd edition of their book Search Engine Marketing, Inc: Driving search traffic to your company's web site. The guide is 600+ pages and packed with practical, applicable information. I've worked my way through it once and now am heading back in to begin implementing some of their strategies.

Search Marketing investment is a staple of an effective web strategy and the "build it and they will come" strategy does not work. No matter how good your product, content, or website is - they will not come unless you invest in your SEM web strategy.

It appears a large proportion of small business owners are still stuck in the "build it and they will come" mentality. The study highlights that most small businesses have developed websites, but have done little more to enhance their online business presence. According to the report, over 59% of small business owners who own websites don't use paid search marketing, and of those, a whopping 90% have never tried it.

Icons is everywhere on the web. In most modern designs it is used to not only complete our design but also to attract the user's eye. Designers use Icons to

So now you can NOT ONLY read these influencer's blogs, but know what other blogs THEY read - and what's on their minds. Why wouldn't you do this? It's all about relevancy, recency and respect: by reading their own recent blog posts as well as their recent comments on other blogs, as a PR pro you show a true interest in your "target." You learn how to not waste their time.

It's fantastic that interest in social media is so high, but I'm alarmed at the number of brands and agencies that are ready to jump into social media to take "advantage" of audience concentration in Facebook, Twitter, and other fast-growth outposts. What's lacking in most social media programs is an actual strategy. If you don't know precisely why you're in social media, with whom you want to engage, and how you're going to measure success, you're not ready to start.

Now, a new breed of companies is trying to tackle all of those options and determine what ad works for a specific audience. They are creating hundreds of versions of clients' online ads, changing elements like color, type font, message, and image to see what combination draws clicks on a particular site or from a specific audience.

Listening tools

I had the opportunity to do a podcast with Avinash to discuss some areas where marketers are doing things right and wrong but all of them are simple but extremely powerful uses of web analytics to make their websites and businesses better on the web. We also took some live Twitter questions as we were doing the podcast. But stop reading this and start listening to Avinash - its 25 minutes long but positively electric!

Know your objectives in advance. Start small, when possible: think "proof of concept." Track the metrics obsessively. Make sure that your interactive marketing efforts are tied to the sales funnel (e.g., your vp of sales ought to be able to determine where most leads are coming from online). Report frequently.

Although social media channels seem to be mostly qualitative in nature, user activities can be easily quantified. Although users interact with channels in different ways, four common factors quantify social media success: Attention, Participation, Authority, and Influence.

But one problem nags at me. Local merchants like "Joe The Plumber" usually don't have a web presence and many don't really even want one. But if you are going to buy cpc advertising, then you'll need a place for the clicks to go. The local ad agencies and local oriented web services are happy to create a web presence for local merchants, but they are often poorly designed and there's no standardization of them.

Great rundown of two successful social media press releases from a skeptical PR consultant

A great starter guide for SEO - if you want to start learning, this guide is a great start.

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

Free landing page templates - but most importantly a quick overview on what a landing page is and why you need to use them.

A landing page is a special page created for the express purpose of "converting" website visitors - to get those visitors to take some action such as filling out a lead form or subscribing to a newsletter. If, for instance, you were running an ad campaign to generate leads online, you would point the ad to your landing page, rather than to your home page where the visitor might get lost or frustrated.

success story of using social media press releases

be a long slog. But I've also often said that its Web-friendly, social nature will put the SMR on "the right side of history." Experiences like Beth and April's are further evidence that change is a'foot.