Blogs

A recent article appeared in SmartMoney Magazine last week, called “10 Things Facebook Won’t Say.”  The following paragraph stopped me in my tracks:

… the ubiquitous “Like” button. But press it or not, if you’re logged in to Facebook while surfing, it will know when you visit any site with these so-called social plug-ins, says Nicole Ozer, a policy director at the ACLU of Northern California. “Facebook can essentially track you around the Web,” she says. Facebook makes all such policies known to users, but critics wonder how many people are paying attention.

Seriously?

The rest of this week's blog post is available at our new blog site:  http://emarketingsweetspot.com/facebook/cookies-to-facebook-plugins-what...

Don't forget to change your bookmarks and your rss feeds for the new site!

In the book, "Tuned In" by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott  (y'all know how much I love David Scott's books), the authors say one single line repeatedly.

"Your opinion, while interesting, is not relevant."

By this the authors mean that when it comes to knowing what will and won't work, what does and doesn't resonate, and what can or can't make your business a success, you simply cannot rely on what you alone like.  You MUST ask your target audience for their opinion.

I recently experienced a perfect example of this in action.

Think about building a new web site like building a house. You wouldn't hire one guy to build your whole house would you?

The architect does not do carpentry, the electrician doesn't know how to design a landscape, and the plumber doesn't install your cable TV.

It requires many skills to do everything right. You want to have your new web site for a long time, just like you want to live in your house for a long time. It needs to be done right from the beginning.

Many of the web site redesign projects I do require a complete rewrite of the content.  The problem is always poor readability.

This is not a difficult concept to understand, especially when you are a visitor to a web site where it is done poorly.  These are the sites where you can't click the browser's Back button fast enough.  The page is cluttered and noisy, the font it too small, or it uses red text on a black background.  It doesn't even matter how nice the site looked at first glance.

I'm starting to become a big fan of video.

I just love the quick 2-3 minute videos that give me something really interesting and useful for my business.  I just got an email from ezinearticles.com (which I recently joined) with a link to their latest "2-minute quick tip video". 

I found a bunch of these videos on their web site which I haven't had time to explore fully but I definitely will!  Even if I make a commitment to myself to watch one a day -- I'm sure I can find 2 minutes a day to watch a video that helps my business.