miercuri, 8 septembrie 2010

Seth's Blog : Three uses for a free Kindle book

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Three uses for a free Kindle book

Charlie Huston used one of his books (no longer free) to get me hooked on the rest of the series. Get one free, buy three. Backwards but effective.

Another: To spread an idea you believe in (where money is not the object).

And: To create hoopla for a new book launch. Josh Bernoff is doing a freebie with his new book, just this week. (Sorry, US only--publishing rights are largely a pre-digital artifact).

When the marginal cost of the interaction is zero, the marketing opportunities of spreading an idea increase dramatically.

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Answering Your Questions About the Economy

We wanted to be sure you saw this email from Austan Goolsbee earlier today. Immediately following the President's remarks on the economy in Cleveland, Austan Goolsbee will be hosting a live chat on WhiteHouse.gov/live. Be sure to tune in to the President's speech at 2:10 PM EDT and join the chat immediately after. You can submit your questions now on Facebook.


The White House, Washington


Good morning,

Millions of our friends and neighbors around the country are looking for work, wondering how they will pay this month’s rent or put food on the table for their families.  At a speech in Wisconsin on Monday, the President made clear that turning our economy around is his top priority:

I am going to keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute, to turn this economy around and put people back to work and renew the American Dream, not just for your family, not just for all our families, but for future generations.

At 2:10 p.m. EDT today, President Obama will announce a set of targeted proposals to help our economy continue on a path to recovery during a speech in Cleveland, Ohio.  I know many of you have questions about what this Administration is doing to support working families and small businesses who are struggling to get by.  So immediately following the President’s remarks, I’ll be hosting a live chat to answer your questions about what we’re doing to help Americans find jobs and to rebuild our economy for the long term.

I’m looking forward to talking with you later today.

Sincerely,

Austan Goolsbee
Council of Economic Advisers

P.S. In case you missed it, you can check out the video of the President’s speech in Wisconsin on Monday where he laid out his plan to put Americans back to work renewing and rebuilding America’s roads, rails and runways:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/labor-day

Visit WhiteHouse.gov

 




 
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Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog


How To Silo Your Website: The Footer

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 08:18 AM PDT

Post image for How To Silo Your Website: The Footer

This post is part of a series on How to Silo Your Website. The other parts in the series are: How to Silo Your Website: The Masthead, How to Silo Your Website, The Breadcrumb , How to Silo Your Website: The Content, and How to Silo Your Website: The Sidebar. For this last part, we’ll be looking at the footer.

Another strategy I’ve seen used that often has good results is the dynamic footer …
Ah…the website footer. Aside from meta keywords and descriptions, it’s hard to think of an area that’s been more abused. A common spot for selling run of site links, turning into a link brothel (looks in the direction of you Lendingtree), or for stuffing content below the copyright information that you can’t even argue is for bots not humans (looks at you Match.com).

It’s hard to resist the temptation to abuse the footer, which IMHO is why links in the footer possess so little value compared to links in the sidebar, masthead, and content sections. So how can a site owner use the footer to their advantage?

First, let’s look at usability. All of those service links that I said you should remove from the masthead and sidebar: this is where they should go. Over the years, people have learned to look here if they need information. However, sometimes the amount of links can make the area look … well … excessively linky. If that’s a problem, I suggest checking out this post on beautiful footers to get some ideas about how to keep it looking good and easy to use.

Another strategy I’ve seen used that often has good results is the dynamic footer, first popularized by Weblogs Inc (the company Jason Calacanis sold to AOL for 25 million). The basic concept is to keep the links in the footer changing and pointing to new or updated content (for Weblogs Inc it was used to show links to new posts all from multiple sites across the network. See divester for an example). While this tactic isn’t as effective as it once was, keeping the footer dynamic is still a good idea worth trying (see How to Make Your Homepage More Dynamic for tips on how and what to include).

So what are the takeaways from this post:

  • Put all of the service links you removed from other sections here.
  • Look for ways to keep it usable and visually appealing.
  • Try to include as much dynamic content as possible.

While there are still some subtleties to siloing a website, hopefully this series has pointed you in the right direction. If you have any questions or followup posts you would like to see, drop me a tweet and let me know @Graywolf.
Creative Commons License photo credit: twicepix

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How To Silo Your Website: The Footer

tla starter kit

Related posts:

  1. How To Silo Your Website:The Sidebar The following post is part of a series on How...
  2. How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead One of the more powerful tools an SEO can use...
  3. How To Silo Your Website: The Breadcrumb Trail In Part 1 we looked at How To Silo Your...
  4. How to Silo Your Website: The Content The following is part of the series How To Silo...
  5. Tip for the Keyword & Link Footer Stuffers If you’re going to stuff your footer with #EEFFFF (very...

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Daily Snapshot: Rebuilding Our Economy

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
 

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day - September 7, 2010

Young dancers participate in a workshop in the East Room of the White House, prior to the White House Dance Series: A Tribute to Judith Jamison performance, Sept. 7, 2010. Students from around the country participated in the 90 minute workshop and then attended the performance honoring Jamison's career in dance. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

View more photos.

Today's Schedule

Today, the President will update the American people on the state of the economy, talk about the progress we have made, and discuss some targeted proposals to keep the economy growing including extending tax cuts for the middle class, and investing in the areas of our economy where the potential for job growth is greatest. It took years to create our economic problems, and it will take more time than any of us would like to fully repair the damage. There are no silver bullets and anyone who is promising them is not being straight with the American people. But there are some ideas that will help the economy and help American families that are hurting and those proposals will be a part of the President’s remarks. Speaking in the city where Minority Leader Boehner recently detailed the Republican economic agenda, the President will lay out the choice between his ideas and the failed policies and failed philosophy that led us into this mess.

All times are Eastern Daylight Time

8:00 AM: The Vice President hosts a breakfast meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

9:45 AM:  The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:30 AM: The Vice President meets with Governor Bill Richardson

12:05 PM: The President departs the White House en route Andrews Air Force Base

12:20 PM: The President departs Andrews Air Force Base en route Cleveland, Ohio

1:30 PM: The President arrives in Cleveland, Ohio

2:10 PM: The President delivers remarks on the economy WhiteHouse.gov/live (audio only)

3:00 PM: Open for Questions: Boosting the Recovery with Austan Goolsbee WhiteHouse.gov/live

3:50 PM: The President departs Cleveland, Ohio en route Andrews Air Force Base

5:00 PM: The President arrives at Andrews Air Force Base

5:15 PM: The President arrives at the White House

5:20 PM: The President meets with senior advisors

WhiteHouse.gov/live  Indicates Events that will be livestreamed on WhiteHouse.gov/live.

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog

Rebuilding Our Economy to Work for Middle Class Americans Again
Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer lays out the stakes on the economy ahead of the President's remarks in Cleveland.

President Proposes New Jobs, Renewed Infrastructure
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood looks at the President's new proposals on infrastructure along with what the Administration has already accomplished.

Prize Platform Invites Citizens to Solve Nation’s Challenges
Deputy Director for Policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Tom Kalil introduces Challenge.gov, a new platform for citizens to share novel solutions, compete for prizes and prestige, and advance our national priorities.

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Answering Your Questions About the Economy


The White House, Washington


Good morning,

Millions of our friends and neighbors around the country are looking for work, wondering how they will pay this month’s rent or put food on the table for their families.  At a speech in Wisconsin on Monday, the President made clear that turning our economy around is his top priority:

I am going to keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute, to turn this economy around and put people back to work and renew the American Dream, not just for your family, not just for all our families, but for future generations.

At 2:10 p.m. EDT today, President Obama will announce a set of targeted proposals to help our economy continue on a path to recovery during a speech in Cleveland, Ohio.  I know many of you have questions about what this Administration is doing to support working families and small businesses who are struggling to get by.  So immediately following the President’s remarks, I’ll be hosting a live chat to answer your questions about what we’re doing to help Americans find jobs and to rebuild our economy for the long term.

I’m looking forward to talking with you later today.

Sincerely,

Austan Goolsbee
Council of Economic Advisers

P.S. In case you missed it, you can check out the video of the President’s speech in Wisconsin on Monday where he laid out his plan to put Americans back to work renewing and rebuilding America’s roads, rails and runways:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/labor-day

Visit WhiteHouse.gov

 




 
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Your Suite of SEO Tools

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Well here's the best part: inside the "SEO BOOK CONFIDENTIAL" forum, you'll be able to post all your problems and questions. You'll get specific advice from me and all the other top-level SEOs in our exclusive club. (Some of these guys charge upwards of $500 per hour... plus, even if you had the money to hire them, they're booked solid, so you couldn't anyway).

 

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Seth's Blog : Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid

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Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid

[this short essay (long blog post) is inspired by and related to this video. You can engage one without the other, but they go together.]

Part 1: The bottom is important.

Almost a third of the world's population earns $2.50 or less a day. The enormity of this disparity takes my breath away, but there's an interesting flip side to it: That's a market of more than five billion dollars a day. Add the next segment ($5 a day) and it's easy to see that every single day, the poorest people in the world spend more than ten billion dollars to live their lives.

Most of that money is spent on traditional items purchased in traditional ways. Kerosene. Rice. Basic medicines if you can afford them or if death is the only alternative. And almost all of these purchases are inefficient. There's lack of information, high costs because of a lack of choice, and most of all, a lack of innovation.

There are two significant impacts here: first, the inefficiency is a tax on the people who can least afford it. Second, the side effects of poor products are dangerous. Kerosene kills, and so does dirty water.

Part 2: The bottom is an opportunity (for both buyer or seller).

If a business can offer a better product, one that's more efficient, provides better information, increases productivity, is safer, cleaner, faster or otherwise improved, it has the ability to change the world.

Change the world? Sure. Because capitalism and markets scale. If you can make money selling someone a safer item, you'll make more. And more. Until you've sold all you can. At the same time, you've enriched the purchaser, who bought something of her own free will because it made things better.

Not only that, but engaging in the marketplace empowers the purchaser. If you've got a wagon full of rice as food aid, you can just dump it in the town square and drive away. You have all the power. But if you have to sell something in order to succeed, it moves the power from the seller to buyer. Quality and service and engagement have to continually improve or the buyer moves on.

The cell phone, for example, has revolutionized the life of billions in the developing world. If you have a cell phone, you can determine the best price for the wheat you want to sell. You can find out if the part for your tractor has come in without spending two days to walk to town to find out. And you can be alerted to weather... etc. Productivity booms. There's no way the cell phone could have taken off as quickly or efficently as a form of aid, but once someone started engaging with this market, the volume was so huge it just scaled. And the market now competes to be ever more efficient.

Part 3: It's not as easy as it looks

And here's the kicker: If you're a tenth-generation subsistence farmer, your point of view is different from someone working in an R&D lab in Palo Alto. The Moral Economy of the Peasant makes this argument quite clearly. Imagine standing in water up to your chin. The only thing you're prepared to focus on is whether or not the water is going to rise four more inches. Your penchant for risk is close to zero. One mistake and the game is over.

As a result, it's extremely difficult to sell innovation to this consumer. The line around the block to get into the Apple store is just an insane concept in this community. A promise from a marketer is meaningless, because the marketer isn't part of the town, the marketer will move away, the marketer is, of course, a liar.

Let me add one more easily overlooked point: Western-style consumers have been taught from birth the power of the package. We see the new nano or the new Porsche or the new convertible note on a venture deal and we can easily do the math: [new thing] + [me] = [happier]. We've been taught that an object can make our lives better, that a purchase can make us happier, that the color of the Tiffany's box or the ringing of a phone might/will bring us joy.

That's just not true for someone who hasn't bought a new kind consumer good in a year or two or three or maybe ever. As a result, stores in the developing world tend to be stocked with the classic, the tried and true, because people buy refills of previous purchases, not the new.

No substistence farmer walks to a store or stall saying, "I wonder what's new today? I wonder if there's a new way for me to solve my problems?" Every day, people in the West say that very thing as they engage in shopping as a hobby.

You can't simply put something new in front of a person in this market and expect them to buy it, no matter how great, no matter how well packaged, no matter how well sold.

So you see the paradox. A new product and approach and innovation could dramatically improve the life and income of a billion people, but those people have been conditioned to ignore the very tools that are a reflex of marketers that might sell it to them. Fear of loss is greater than fear of gain. Advertising is inefficient and ineffective. And the worldview of the shopper is that they're not a shopper. They're in search of refills.

The answer, it turns out, is in connecting and leading Tribes. It lies in engaging directly and experientially with individuals, not getting distribution in front of markets. Figure out how to use direct selling in just one village, and then do it in ten, and then in a hundred. The broad, mass market approach of a Western marketer is foolish because there is no mass market in places where villages are the market.

The (eventual) power of the early adopter

Swami This gentleman is a swami, a leader in his village. He owns a d.light lantern. Why? He could fit all his worldly positions into a rollaboard, and yet he owns a solar lantern, the first man in his village to buy one.

For him, at least this one time, he liked the way it felt to be seen as a leader, to go first, to do an experiment. Perhaps his followers contributed enough that the purchase didn't feel risky. Perhaps the person he bought it from was a friend or was somehow trusted. It doesn't really matter, other than understanding that he's rare.

After he got the lantern, he set it up in front of his house. Every night for six months, his followers would meet on his front yard to talk, to connect and yes, to wonder how long it would be before the lantern would burn out. Six months later, the jury is still out.

One day, months or years from now, the lantern will be seen as obvious and trusted and a safe purchase. But it won't happen as fast as it would happen in Buffalo or Paris. The imperative is simple: find the early adopters, embrace them, adore them, support them, don't go away, don't let them down. And then be patient yet persistent. Mass market acceptance is rare. Viral connections based on experience are the only reliable way to spread new ideas in communities that aren't traditionally focused on the cult of the new.

This raises the bar for customer service and exceptional longevity, value and design. It means that the only way to successfully engage this market is with relentless focus on the conversations that tribe leaders and early adopters choose to have with their peers. All the tools of the Western mass market are useless here.

Just because it is going to take longer than it should doesn't mean we should walk away. There are big opportunities here, for all of us. It's going to take some time, but it's worth it. [More info: Acumen]

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