Social media has been one of the most powerful lead generation channels for online businesses and blogs. It establishes a two-way communication and maximises engagement with a highly targeted audience; you get to hear their valuable feedback and you get to promote your content. [Read more…]
Tips for Building High Quality Backlinks
With the arrival of Google’s search algorithm update known as Penguin, there was a panic among small businesses and bloggers that their SEO work may fail them, sending them plunging down the results page and into online obscurity. The damage to their profits could be tremendous.
Building high quality backlinks naturally isn’t a secretive process. It’s something anyone can do if you commit to the right strategy and the hard work it requires. Here are a few tips for building high quality backlinks that will last: [Read more…]
Hello Magazine gives readers blogging opportunity
Celebrity-watching Hello Magazine Online is giving readers the opportunity to blog for the magazine.
Anyone who is “articulate, opinionated and itching to share [their] thoughts about the lives of the rich and famous” can apply to become an official hellomagazine.com blogger.
In an interview with the Online Journalism Blog, Online Marketing Manager David Witcomb talked about the details. [Read more…]
UK’s Daily Mirror offers readers opportunity to blog about Premier League football
Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper is offering a select group of its readers the chance to blog about their favourite Premiership football team for the entire 2008/09 season, which starts in a little under two weeks time.
Successful applicants will need to write at least one 300-word blog post each week about their team, which will then be published online to “millions of readers around the world”.
It’s not clear exactly how many people read the Mirror’s sports blogs already, but you certainly would have a decent chance of being read and your words appreciated than if you simply had your own site. However, while “fame and glory awaits” (according to the newspaper), there’s no other incentive for the writer, while the newspaper gets additional copy without having to pay. [Read more…]
YouTube Put More Focus on Citizen News
YouTube wants to put more focus on citizen news, so enter Olivia, the new News Manager who urges people to participate. She’s got a channel up, want tips by e-mail, and says hi in a video:
CNN Pushes Mixx
TechCrunch notes that CNN is featuring Mixx, the Digg competitor, separately from other social bookmarking services. The “Mixx it” link and logo goes beside the E-mail to a friend and Share links, so that’s quite more space than the competition gets. Should be a good boost to the Mixx userbase. I wonder what they paid for it?
In other Mixx news, there’s an API out. You can play with it in the Blender section for Mixx wizardry, should you be so inclined.
Groundbreaking Blog Viral Marketing: Obsidian Blackout Event
JC Hutchins has been breaking rules even before he started his blog in an attempt to give away his science fiction novel, 7th Son, which publishers didn’t want, as a free podiobook, one of the first audio books published as a weekly series of podcasts. He has come up with a variety of interesting viral campaigns to promote his book, blog, podcasts, and writings, turning his unpublished book into the most popular podiobook series in history, and becoming a specialist in the true sense of social networking and marketing. His innovative online self-marketing techniques attracted St. Martin’s Press, and his book will finally be published in 2009.
Tapping the creativity of his fan-base, Hutchins is breaking rules again by asking people to become victims and make history.
[Read more…]
Content Is Becoming a Commodity
Sarah Perez, a blogger I respect highly has written a post on Read Write Web that I feel will open the eyes of many bloggers towards what I believe to be the coming issue with blogging for money in general: control over content.
This is something that I knew was coming as the RIAA started to fight for control over music, and now the fight for content freedom has expanded to movies, and while both of these are fighting a losing war, it was only a matter of time before the profitability of raw textual content started to see more of the same issues.
It is summed up nicely in the post:
It’s not just bloggers whose content is being used, shared, and profited from today – perhaps now bloggers can begin to appreciate what other industries, like the recording industry or the movie-making industry, has had to face in this new digital age.
What this means for us as bloggers and new media creators is that the very technologies that we have grown to love are the same forces that are turning our efforts, be them our words, our videos, our music, our photos, or anything we create, into a commodity – something that has little monetary value on its own, but in aggregate, can become something of value.
This could mean that data on its own won’t be of great value, but filters, like TechMeme, and other services will feed our ever increasing need for content and make big money doing it.
You have to read through this post. Let it all sink in before giving your opinion on this, as the implications are, at least in my mind, very far reaching.
Jason Calacanis looking for a new host for Mahalo Daily
With the departure of his host from the daily videoblog Mahalo Daily, Jason Calacanis is looking for a new host.
No word on where his thought process is in terms of finding that new host – but Christina Warren wants the job – and she’ll drink Mahalo’s milkshake to get it…
Nearly half of Americans creating own entertainment content, including blogs
The number of Americans creating their own online content to share with others is increasing, according to new survey figures.
Around 45% of those surveyed said that they regularly worked on their own web sites, blogs, photo albums, and music online, to share with everyone from family and friends, to peers, to total strangers.
Deloitte’s 2008 State of the Media Democracy marks a twelve point escalation from their Spring 2007 survey, and strongly suggests that such online activities are increasingly popular among more than just a niche of tech-savvy individuals.
“Mass digitization has created unheralded choice and desire for American consumers,” said Ed Moran, director of product innovation for Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications group. “Now, more than ever, consumers have the independence to enjoy what they want, when they want it, and where they want it — but increasingly, they are also choosing to create content themselves, or re-working other people’s content.”
36% of respondents also viewed their mobile phone as an entertainment device, with it playing an increasingly important role not just in basic communications but also for photos, music, and games.
The continued move to mobile is likely to affect how and where blogs and other online media are both created and consumed.
The online survey was commissioned by Deloitte and conducted by Harrison Group, an independent research company, between October 25 and October 31, 2007. The survey polled 2,081 consumers between the ages of 13 and 75.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »
