Nonprofit marketing - a primer

Over the years, I've worked for and with several non-profits. A common refrain among the fundraising team is frustration with "the people who don't give."

"Why don't people give? Don't they know you don't get something for nothing?"

People are not ungrateful. They are not, as a rule stingy. The primary reason people don't give is because they are not asked. You may think you have asked, but if they did not hear the request, or they did not realize it was for them, you have not, in fact, asked in any useful way. You have a communication problem, not an "other people are bad" problem.

So, if you have asked but they have not responded, review your communications. We'll publish tips over the next few weeks on ways to increase giving by amplifying your message, connecting the reasons people want to give with what you want to accomplish, and making it easy to give. Let's start with that last one.

Eight tips for making it easy to give - and two things to avoid.

1. Investigate Paypal and, if possible, provide an online donation option.
   
2. Accept credit cards and publicize that you do so.
   
3. Provide a return envelope when sending direct mail or enclosures in your children's folders for school fundraising.
   
4. If you're raising money for a church, make sure your pledge cards and donations cards highly visible and accessible throughout popular gathering places on your campus.
   
5. Have clearly marked, secure donation boxes available around your community.
   
6. Collect donations at every event - not necessarily actively, sometimes a simple jar is enough - but give people an opportunity to give at the time they are feeling the most connected to your cause.
7. Selling items or trying to get a scrip program off the ground? Put a personable team together to staff an ongoing table.
8. Identify a point of contact to answer all questions related to fundraising and make that person regularly visible.
9. One don't? Don't underestimate the time, talent, mutual support and commitment it takes to get a solid fundraising effort off the ground - nor the number of man hours it will take to sustain it.
   
10. The most important don't? Don't be ashamed of asking for money. Make your case passionately, clearly and forthrightly - and often enough to get the results you need. If you are timid about asking for the resources to make the change you want to make, people will pick up on your ambivalence. They will not support your programs because your reluctance to ask for funding makes it look as if, perhaps, your entire heart is not in the effort. Since that is not the case, be confident in your fund raising.
    

Next - What's the big idea? That is, do you have a big idea to wrap around your fund-raising effort? Why should people support your cause? (Subscribe to be notified when the next post goes live)

Bruce Almighty brings my Sears dryer back to life

An affable guy named Bruce from my old repair shop favorite, A&E Factory Service, showed up to fix my dryer. He was not from Colorado Springs like the competent Norman of old, which makes me wonder if the A&E repair guys are semi-independent contractors, perhaps. I believe Bruce is from Arvada.

Regardless, he got straight to work in my messy washroom. After about half an hour of tinkering with the dryer, he told me the element had burnt out. I now have a new element, a working dryer and boundless gratitude for Bruce. He refused any remuneration, so here's to you, Bruce, wherever you are. Thank you. You restored my faith in Sears.

I highly recommend A&E for your appliance repairs, in Colorado at least, because they have now fixed my broken dryer twice. They've done so quickly and efficiently both times. They're just all around good guys. And Sears? Well,

1. Sears customer service has cut the block of time one has to allocate from all day to a four hour period.
2. They rescheduled just once this time.
3. They called ahead to let me know they needed to change the time- a huge improvement.
4. Yet again, the repair guy was competent, professional and pleasant.

So, thank you, Sears and A&E. This was a much better experience than last year. I am glad I am still a customer.

Sears customer service update

The technician from A&E just called (at 4:10.) He is 25 minutes away, which should put him here within the 1:00-5:00 window. Odd - we are not supposed to be in his territory. He is not the guy who called yesterday, which is also bemusing. But A&E did a great job last time, so I am not complaining.

Sears puts the "cuss" in customer service, part two

Over a year ago, I did a series of posts about Sears' awful customer service. My clothes dryer ceased to work. After a series of unfortunate events caused by Sears' absolute determination to place multiple layers of contact between the customer and the service person, the dryer eventually got fixed. It took something like twelve calls over eleven days to get a technician to darken my door. But Norman from A&E eventually showed up, fixed the dryer, and I was a happy woman.

This week, my dryer broke again. No heat. Drat.

Ironically, I had called Sears last Saturday, despite my vow to avoid them. They sent a coupon in a direct mail piece offering carpet cleaning. Our carpets really needed cleaning, their prices were terrific, so, what the heck.

I called that Saturday, they scheduled the cleaning for Monday afternoon at 1:00 - and they showed up three hours early. But they called first to make sure it was okay. The guy did a fantastic job. Since we were luckily ready for him, the early showing was not a problem.

That afternoon, the dryer ceased to heat. Feeling warm and fuzzy about Sears, the next day, I called for an appointment. They asked if I had run a load without clothes (me: "no") or cleaned the duct (me: "I don't know how, can you walk me through that on the phone?" Them: "No. We will make an appointment instead, since your dryer is under warranty.")

The very pleasant phone rep then made an appointment for my still-under-warranty dryer for today between 1:00 and 5:00. Last night, they called around 6:30 to remind me they were coming.

Today, the technician called around 11:00, ahead of his 1:00-5:00 appointment, and the conversation went like this:

Me: "Hello?"
Technician:" Hello, this is Sears. We have a service call scheduled for your house today between 1:00 and 5:00."
Me" "Yes - for the dryer. I'll be here. "
Technician: "Well, we're not coming."
Me: "What?"
Technician: "We're not coming. Can you be there tomorrow between 1:00 and 5:00?"
Me (steaming, because we are so clearly, again, not a priority for them): "Someone.will.be.here."

Of course, it is Friday, and we do have plans for Friday night, so we shall see if Sears and their local representatives FUBAR this repair like they did last time. I find it jaw-dropping that service guys think that customers find it easy to set four hour blocks of time on hold for them multiple times, on short notice. As a consultant, I bill by the hour, and even though I can do *some* work at home, their disdain disrupts my business.

I guess Sears doesn't care whether we continue to purchase Sears appliances or the warranties - or the local guys they use don't care. Either way, I am interested to see what happens tomorrow. But I am going to blog this again, with hopes it has a happier ending than the last marathon.

PS: I checked to see if Sears has a Twitter account. I found one with 102 followers and no tweets. If you know of a way to get in touch with them besides their tortuous phone service, let me know.

The Smith & Hawken email offer: five reasons it's Hail Mary marketing gone bad

Today, I received an email from Smith & Hawken announcing that "everything is 50% off!" - except furniture, which is 60% off. As an occasional customer of theirs, I clicked through to see if there were any early Christmas presents to be had. Because of the poor construction of the campaign. I wasted fifteen minutes I'll never get back in order to discover that the sale was good only at their retail store, which is 45 minutes away.

The campaign is a terrific example of bad marketing, but there is a story behind the bad marketing. It turns out that Smith & Hawken is going out of business. There seems to be some bad feeling between Scotts Miracle Gro, the parent company, and Smith & Hawken. Whoever created this campaign passes on that bad feeling to the customers by making us jump through hoops to find out how to purchase.

Why is this bad marketing? Let us count the ways.

1. No online component to the sale. The email was meant to send me to a local store. I read the email title, and, unsurprisingly since I have been an occasional customer, was interested in finding something to buy. Email offers usually mean online sales. Since I did not know the back story, I expected to find a sale on their website.

2. No text-only version. The email required you to be able to see the image to understand the specifics. Since I have images turned off by default, which is not uncommon, it was difficult to even find the hotspot to click through to the site. For some reason, the only clickable part of the ad was the top 20%.

3. Poor usability on the "website." The home page of the site is now a monolithic image with a hot spot on the bottom left. Poor usability: since we scan from top to bottom, left to right, I had to scan three fourths of the ad before I found where to click.

How long does it take you to find this call to action - the entire purpose of the email and ad?

4. No website. The only functional part of the website is the store locator. Can you read the yellow text on the teal background below? Our online store is currently not operational. That implies that it may be operational again in the future. In fact, I initially thought they were redesigning the website and, perhaps, staging a sale because the redesign was not finished on time. But then, in even smaller print, it says "all sales are final."

Tiny print (especially compared to the huge fonts above it), light on a dark background, -- located on the bottom right of an ad - says that the designer intentionally diminished the visibility of this text.

5. Deceptive whitelisting messages. At the very top of the ad, in teeny-tiny type, it asks you to add Smith & Hawken to your approved email list. That implies I will continue to get email from them, and that they are an ongoing concern. In fact, of course, they're going out of business. If Scott wanted to continue to keep me as a customer, they would acknowledge that this is from the parent company and perhaps give me the option to opt-in to their communications. But these brands are wholly divorced from each other. Whoever sent this email obviously does not have a goal to retain or convert me to a Scotts Miracle Gro customer. I *do* have the option to opt out of the Smith & Hawken mailing list at the bottom of the email. That makes me wonder who will have my email contact information after the company is dissolved.

If you can read this, your eyesight is so much better than mine!

So, it's clear, based on the bad customer experience, that Scott does not expect those who respond to this ad to continue to be their customers. The lack of thought and resources that went into this campaign effectively torches the Smith & Hawken brand. However, at least in my case, they damage the Scotts Miracle Gro brand as well.

Online tools connect those who wish to learn to those who teach

Several years ago, I taught college business courses for Oregon Tech on their Fort Lewis campus. My students were primarily soldiers, though there were a few civilian adult learners who worked during the day and took my courses at night. They shamed me because, as students, they knew what I had not when I was a casual undergrad: that the education they were receiving was a stepping stone to a better life. They took it so seriously. Their commitment inspired and challenged me to help them realize their dreams by teaching them useful information as well and thoroughly as I possibly could.

Back then (2001-2003), distant learning tools were cumbersome and required a deeper understanding of technology than most professors and instructors had the time and inclination to obtain. My, how times have changed.

Twitter as class aid?
This video features a Dr. Rankin, who is a professor of History at UT Dallas, and her students. They are using Twitter to broaden the classroom discussion and to create an ongoing archive of class topics for students to sue as a study aid. (Oh how I would have loved this tool back in the day, since I could have tweeted from home, in my pajamas. But that distorts the concept).

• Useful link: Getting started with Twitter - a link to their support resources.

Facebook - it's not just an adventure, it might be a job
Stanford students have been learning how to develop Facebook applications for several years. The class is one of the most popular at the university. The students seem motivated by, well, greed - not that there is anything wrong with that.

The faculty at this school use Facebook as a feedback tool. Students can critique each other's work. Alumni also weigh in on student efforts. Alumni participation in class projects via social media is a largely unexplored aspect of the technology. They are usually asked to help with the job search or internships, not the classroom experience. Yet, here is a large pool of people familiar with the class topics who might help enrich the learning experience in a variety of positive ways.

• Useful link: Get started building Facebook applications.

YouTube - keg parties and class notes at the same place, just like real life
YouTube is fertile ground for finding lectures, student projects, and online learning aids. If you go to youtube.com and search on TeacherTube (an educational video sharing effort), you will find hundreds of related links to educational videos and resources. Here is just one article discussing the pros and cons of YouTube to augment your college curriculum.

I am amused by the woman who says teaching is not just content delivery, so these online tools cannot replace faculty. I respectfully suggest that the train of thought misses the point - which is that committed faculty can reach more students better than they would in any other way, simply by using these tools. To begin with, we can attract more students by using these tools to enable students to sample our classes before they sign up. We can also provide more value by augmenting our (perhaps sparkling, perhaps not) personalities and inarguably limited personal knowledge base by adding the wealth of subject matter expertise that is found on the Internet. We add depth to the classroom experience by providing a variety of ways to access the information they need to learn and to foster the discussions - in-person and online - that deepen their knowledge.

• Useful link: How to embed a YouTube video in your webpage (or blog)


• Useful link: How to upload a video to YouTube

Super resource list
The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies list 100 top online learning resources here. Although they source a relatively small sample of 102 teaching professional, the list is a terrific starting point if you are interested in finding technologies that will enhance your teaching - or learning experiences.

Bad use of social media - FanIQ harvests address books to send deceptive email invites

This morning, I received an email from a friend of mine. The title was "Compare yourself to Joe Schmo" (joe@schmo.com). (Obviously, I changed the names).The body said that Joe had sent me a private message and to please read it or Joe would think I ignored it.

The site that sent the email is called FanIQ. They apparently really, really want to harvest email addresses. This site lists the sequence of steps they take you through to get you to register.

FanIQ will now send me a series of reminders to subscribe, much to the embarrassment of my friend and to my irritation. My friend is tech-savvy, yet was taken in and thus forced to send an apology to everyone in his address book.

This is so clearly bad marketing that I am unable to figure out what it is they hope to achieve. it's bad for the FanIQ brand and bad for their entire business.

So, I will never join their community. The people who unintentionally allow FanIQ to access their entire contact list, including business contacts, job-related addresses, and other people to whom it's hard to explain a gaffe like this, hold them in low regard.

It's too bad, because I am an avid college football fan and thus a member of their target market. I might join a community like this one if they were not so needlessly aggressive - and thus incompetent - in their marketing.

15 tips for new college freshmen

A good friend of mine asked a bunch of her friends, including me, for suggestions for a family member who will be entering college in the fall. Since I think kids these days know that daiquiris have alcohol in them - something I learned my first freshman weekend - I was not immediately sure what I had to say for today's freshmen. So, the challenge was to figure out what from my experience a generation ago might be of use to someone now.

First, I loved college. Thinking of the fall of freshman year brings back a multimedia series of memories for me- the snap of cool air, the smell of burning leaves, and the brilliant orange, yellow and rich brown hues that heralded autumn. I remember being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the college campus and the daunting amount I was supposed to learn in my first biology class. It was a transformational time for me.

Vivid emotions return, much deeper, richer and more resonant than the tamer, more innocent, pastels of my high school memories. Sophomore year, I transferred to Auburn University, and moved away from the town where I grew up for the first time. I remember watching the door of my on-campus apartment close and feeling a heart-wrenching pang when my parents left. That pang was immediately overshadowed by my exuberant roommate, who reached over my shoulder from behind, handed me a beer, and said, "Let's go meet everybody" - and we did. (Shy people, as I was at the time, benefit enormously by having outgoing friends like that particular roommate.)

I remember my first tentative forays to parties, the surprise and happiness of meeting new friends, the heart-pounding excitement of SEC football games, the bittersweet life lesson of confusing love and infatuation...and making many small and large boneheaded mistakes while fumbling my way to adulthood. I am still not sure when adulthood arrived, but I think motherhood actually caused that particular curtain to finally rise.

So, when I was asked to revisit that time and note what I'd wished I knew, I wrote the following. I wrote it in a hurry, and it's not complete, of course, but I thought I'd share it nonetheless. Maybe something will resonate for you, or maybe I can keep it handy, and add to it, to revisit when my son makes that journey. Let me know what you think, what you'd add, and what you think is not worthwhile.

1. Your common sense is the only peer of yours whose pressure warrants a second thought. Your real-life peers are generally as or more confused as you are.

2. Network without reserve. Ask your family and friends and parents' friends for help when you are thinking of various careers, need a summer job, or want an internship. One of them will know someone who knows someone who can get you that internship or summer job -- or just a conversation that might either open a door or make you change your mind.

3. Don't broadcast too much of your life online. Online is forever, and what makes sense now, or is just spur-of-the-moment fun, may cause you to cringe in five, ten or twenty years.

4. There is a difference between giddy mistakes and soul-scarring decisions, and don't hesitate to ask for help when life gets tough. I hope you don't encounter the latter type of experience so early, but most people do. Both, wrenching as they can be to experience, will add value to your life if you learn from them and don't just store them away, out of thought. Most of all, though, make sure you always have at least one person you know you can go to who will help you through those toughest times, doesn't betray secrets and loves you unconditionally. They'll help you sail through the trickiest times and come out as unscathed as possible.

5. There are a lot more people who you'll find fun to kiss than who you'll fall in love with. Enjoy dating, don't take it too seriously, keep it light, and the serious relationships will inevitably come. Don't go overboard - no one ever said, "Wow, I really admire the way (s)he gets around."

6. Ask for advice from those you trust and respect. You will be surprised that grown-ups you know have struggled with the same issues you will encounter, made some of the same wise and unwise decisions. People like being asked for advice and they will give you guidance you can use as one factor to help you make your own decisions.

7. A well-lived life is one that is made of consistently good decisions, small and large, one at a time, that build to happiness and contentment. Sometimes those decisions are profound - which job should I take? Sometimes they are deadly dull - should I skip class today? It's easy to make most of those decisions, and they build a platform to take you where you want to go, even if you don't yet know exactly where that is. It's like working out - not particularly stimulating or exciting, but over time, the results are undeniable.

8. Adventure away. This is the time of your life where you have a unique mix of budding maturity and a lack of responsibility. Enjoy it thoroughly, take chances, try new things - surprise yourself. Your new experiences will far outweigh your mistakes,and you'll be surprised by the new lifelong passions you'll find.

9. Connect to your existing hobbies and talents when you get to college. Join a sports team, sign up for a club or two. Don't overdo it, but make sure you have some connection to the things that matter to you so you can meet other people who have that same connection and make new friends.

10. Share your time, treasure and talent. Do something nice, large or small, for someone else every day. It sounds corny, but that energy you put out in the world is in fact the energy that returns to you.

11. "No" is a valuable word. Learn how and when to use it to protect yourself from overcommitment, from people who want to take advantage of you, from putting yourself in danger, and from letting someone else tell you what to do. (People are going to be asking you to do more things than ever before, so even though this tip might sound patronizing, your new world has so many new options that it's worth revisiting).

12. "Yes" is a valuable word. Learn how and when to use it to try new things, to help other people, to create connections with people who will turn out to be lifelong friends, and to find surprising new routes for your life.

13. Have fun - lots and lots of fun. For a very long time, every year can be better than the year before. At some point in the very distant future, I'm told that you go over the hill, and that may cease to be the case. But, with a little luck, your unbroken line of better-than-the-year-before-years can last 50, 60 years or more - and the remainder will be better because of the early, happy ones.

14. Stay in close contact with your family and your best friends. Tell the people you love that you love them early and often. This not least because, if you experience an unexpected loss, you'll know that your loved one knew you loved them and also knew the things you appreciated most about them.

15. Being happily single is surpassed only by being happily in a committed relationship. Being in an unhappy relationship is worse than being unhappily single, because a relationship just to "have someone" does that someone no favors and is dishonest at its core. So have fun when you're single and be open to recognizing that real relationship when it either zings you and reveals itself as a surprising change from a long-term friendship.

destinationCRM.com: The 4 Fail Whales of Social Media Marketing

destinationCRM.com: The 4 Fail Whales of Social Media Marketing

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Is Twitter just high-tech narcissism?

Love this article because what Jonathan describes is exactly how I am using Twitter. Plus, I don't think frivolity is all that bad :-).

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Talking about Trapster

I was interviewed today by our local Fox station about Trapster, which I wrote about last year. I had some challenges making it work at first, because I did not have a 3G phone at the time and there were few users in my area. Now I have a 3G phone and Trapster seems to be getting lots of publicity, which leads to more users, which means meaningful data, which, along with a well-thought out feature set, leads to a great application. We road trip to Seattle to the west and to the Gulf Coast to the east, and Trapster would come in very handy in those small towns where the speed limit drops precipitously. So, consider me a convert.

Dry Ice Factory Resident Artist Opening Reception April 17, 6:00-10:00 p.m.

My client and friend, the sculptor Michaele Greene, will be participating in the Dry Ice Factory Resident Artist Opening on April 17 from 6:00-10:00 PM. If her work is any indication, there will be some gorgeous art on display. Art, wine, a new gallery in an historic space to browse through - just a great way to spend a Friday night.

What: Dry Ice Factory Resident Artist Opening
Where: 3300 Walnut Street, Denver, CO 80205
When: Friday, April 17, 6:00PM until 10:00PM
Details: What's old and new at the same time? Denver's own historical old Dry Ice Factory has been renovated to one of the newest artistic hot spots in town. Located on 33rd and Walnut, this beautiful old building now houses a host of artists' studios plus a large and magnificent gallery. Bring a friend or bring a group! Share a glass of wine with friends while enjoying some fantastic art in this incredibly new and beautiful gallery.

The Eyes of Me - documentary on blind teenagers in Texas

"The Eyes of Me presents an extraordinary look at four blind teenagers. The parallel stories of two freshmen and two seniors unfold over the course of one dynamic year at the Texas School for the Blind in Austin."

I know the folks at Stuck on On (http://stuckonon.com) who did some work on this documentary, which I hope I can find a way to watch in Colorado. It premiered at SXSW in Austin in March. The trailer puts you - just for a few minutes - in the shoes of the teenagers who are the subjects of the documentary. The emotions they share are different than I expected - more anger, more determination, mild exasperation at the limits other people place on them that they clearly do not need or want... It's definitely worth a look.

Eleven Twitter tools I like

Okay, to be clear: I am not a Twitter fanatic. I do think Twitter can and should be used in a wonderful and wild variety of ways. Maybe you want to network with thought leaders in your professional niche. Or let friends and family track your cross-country road trip. Maybe you want to know snow and ski conditions in the Rockies. Be the most popular guy at the prom. Maybe you want to find a job. A client. A friend. Who knows. But no matter how extensively or narrowly you want to use Twitter, there are tools to help you.

The list below is for avid readers, information gluttons, people who like to share interesting articles, and the curious. It is *not* for Testy Tweeters -- those who think there is only one correct path to Twitter, and that path is deadly serious. This list may not even be much use for anyone who is systematically trying to build a cohesive brand strategy with trackable, measurable results. It is simply a list of tools and sites I think have improved my own Twitter experience.

1. http://hashtags.org/ See what topics people are following
2. http://tinyurl.com/create.php Create those short URLs to pass on links to articles of interest.
3. search.twitter.com See what people are talking about
4. http://friendfeed.com/ Okay, this one is aspirational for me at the moment. I just set up my FriendFeed account and am musing about whether it is useful for anyone besides, well, me.
5. http://www.wefollow.com/ User-powered Twitter directory and great place to find people you want to follow.
6. http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/ Tweetie for iPhone - I love it because it lets me manage multiple accounts and it is easy to use.
7. http://twittercounter.com/pages/100 Top 100 people in your time zone. If you go to twittercounter.com, it gives you the top number of tweets, top number of followers, top number of friends, and so on. It is a fun time sink.
8. http://useqwitter.com/ Twitter tells me who started following me, but does not tell me who stops when people elect not to follow any more. To be honest, at the moment, I don't much care, because most people who start and stop following seem to be direct marketers. But over time, I will want to know. So, I signed up today and will see how it goes.
9. http://twinfluence.com/ Most reach. Most "velocity." Most "social capital." To explain this will take another blog post, but it is really interesting. This site speaks most to what I want to do on Twitter - which is extend my reach and social capital to meet people who do interesting things and exchange ideas.
10. http://tweetgrid.com/ Build a - well, grid - or dashboard of topics you want to follow to see the latest tweets.
11. http://twitter.grader.com/ I like this because it tells me where I rank (in the world) and how I score (I need to figure out what a perfect 100 is and how to get it :-).) It gives me a graph of how my followers and those I follow are trending. It lets me know who ranks highly in my local area of Denver and Castle Rock. Just good solid statistics in a variety of areas.

Interesting tools that are on hold for one reason or another:

http://www.tweetwheel.com/ Who knows whom? The tweetwheel will tell you if someone you're following knows someone else you're following. It builds a wheel of interaction, which is cool, if not obviously useful. Has taken too long to load each time I have tried it - it eventually times out.

http://twitterless.com/ Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views.

Thinking about Twitter?

Lessons in Twitter Hygiene from Clo Willaerts is a handy dandy quick guide to help you avoid initial easy-to-make mistakes. Gotta love the hype cycle concept too.

For example, I did subscribe to a bot (daylife_feed) and, though it initially satisfied my news jones, the original news sources - the journalists, pundits, commentators and bloggers - are on Twitter, so you don't need an aggregator. If you *do* want to isolate a keyword or phrase for, say, your company, daylife_feed is good for that. Of course, so is search.twitter.com.

Something off the wall

Here is a link to "Made Up Words in the Simpsons," cataloguing and explaining such immortal terms as craptacular, Dorkus malorkus, cromulent and crisatunity.

Measuring Online Influence

This is a great article by Micah Baldwin on how you can discern whether someone is viewed as an expert by an online community - and, by extension, how you can develop your personal brand.

"In terms of measuring online influence, the stronger the personal brand, the more influence one wields online. The most important component of online influence is trust. Trust is defined as creating a consistent expectation that a person will always act in your best interest when given information."

Real-time search using Twitter and Google

http://mt-hacks.com/tag/twitter/

This guy at Movable Type Hacks has some intriguing plugins. To search the five most recent tweets on a topic, he created a GreaseMonkey script. YOu have to get the plugin for Firefox. but it's an interesting concept, as is the overarching question of whether Twitter is a threat to Google, and, if so, how.

If the link above does not work, use http://mt-hacks.com.

How to grow your blog to the next level with SEO

How to grow your blog to the next level with SEO
Nice common sense article by Darren Rouse about what to do to promote your blog once you're out of stealth mode. (I'm just bookmarking this for later review.)

24/7 Wall St. Ranks the Most Valuable Blogs

24/7 Wall St. chose the 25 most valuable blogs, based on a pretty loose set of criteria.

The most interesting thing about this? The Perez Hilton site is worth an estimated $32 million. For writing campy tripe and drawing on pictures with his white markers, Mario Lavandeira apparently earns nearly $9 million a year in advertising revenue. He's a hard-working guy with a definite, tireless talent for self-promotion - don't get me wrong. Just WOW, though.

So, what else pops out? Well, we apparently like gossip, politics, technology & gadgets, sports and financial information - in various combinations. There is some support for the notion that people tend to gravitate to like-minded people. Sugar is for girls and young women. Wowowow is for women over 40. The Huffington Post and DailyKos are largely appealing to those who are politically center-left or simply left. However, gadget geeks and investment folks are all ages, genders, locations and political affiliations, so we're still engaging in diverse interaction on a lot of topics.

I was surprised at the popularity of the women's sites. I also think women fuel the popularity of the gossip sites - purely because most of my friends who are interested in pop culture are female. So women are a force to consider now, which is amazing considering how scarce they were when I got started in this online business 15 or more years ago.

News is of interest to folks, but via Drudge or HuffPo, not CNN, MSNBC or Fox. Or, they want topic-specific news they find at SB Nation (sports), mashable and TechCrunch (technology), or the Alley Insider sites (Silicon Alley, Greensheet, and so on).

Last, site traffic seems to be on the upswing for many of these sites. So, even if advertising prices drop, I am willing to bet that readership numbers will continue to increase for well-written blogs and sites centered on those core topics - gossip, politics, technology & gadgets, sports and financial information. MAybe I'll go sign up for Google's AdSense and dip my toe in.

Mashable offers up job hunt sites

Okay, I love mashable.com. If you're reading this, I highly recommend you bookmark them, follow them, add them to whatever RSS service you use. They consistently post useful information about current technologies, websites, and the online zeitgeist. Lots of user-generated content, so if you're a savvy tech guru, it's also a great place to post an article lots of people will see.

Their latest offering? several things that can help anyone looking around for work.
Top ten social networking sites to help find a job
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More royalty-free images - Wikimedia Commons ROCKS!

Wikimedia is a media file repository - that is a fancy way of saying they have tons of images, sounds, and video files, royalty-free. I recommend donating to them - this is a wonderful site. I had a client who needed some pictures of small businesses - done. They have some great pictures of Jack Russell terriers. So far, I've not explored the videos except for an historical one or two. But it's fun and useful - check it out.

Mail Goggles make sure you don't hate yourself in the morning

Have you ever played Drink and Dial? Had that irresistable urge after a few too many mojitos to call someone you've not spoken to in ten or twenty years and share your great mood? Or get that deep dark secret off your chest? Tell your boss what you really think of him or her? Woken up the next morning wondering why you're feeling crummy and then remembered with that sinking sense of dread just exactly what you shared in your tipsy candor?

I haven't ever been that silly, of course. I am a staid and pragmatic marketer. I did have a friend- yeah, that's the ticket - who, long ago when she was single, after a dinner of more wine than food, while at a conference in a city not her own, found an ex-boyfriend's number in the local phone book and gave him a call at or about midnight. She just wanted to catch up and reminisce about past good times, as I recall, but his wife was not as jovial as she expected her to be when she answered...but I digress.

In today's digital world, you don't have to fumble through the phone book. You can text or email whomever you wish from your contact list and bare whatever soul-searing secret you want. Google Labs has something on tap called Mail Goggles to save you from yourself. It forces you to do a few simple math problems to make sure you are coherent enough to get that email off your chest. It looks like, should you not pass the math test, Google won't send the mail.

Worth a look, but far better simply to just stay completely away from the computer in the wee hours after a few drinks. If you cannot say Google Goggles three times really fast, don't touch your email.

Handy pixels/ems calculator

http://riddle.pl/emcalc/