The Executive Whisper

Can you Stumble your way to more traffic? Yes, but…

admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:45:34 +0000

The recent headlines were astonishing. A somewhat unknown discovery engine called StumbleUpon, with a mere 13 million users, sends more traffic to web sites in the U.S. than 750 million-member strong Facebook.. If this stat is indeed true – and it appears to be so – then this would alter almost every company’s Facebook-is-the-center-of-the-social-media-universe strategy. [...]

When do you take down a microsite?

admin — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:51:48 +0000

Reader Question: I have a question about microsites. If you make a microsite for a certain promotion, what do you generally do with it once that promotion is over? How long do you keep that site up? For a few weeks after? Do you then direct people who type in the URL to a main [...]

Business marketers should choose Google over Twitter

admin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:11:30 +0000

If you’re a marketer for a small or mid-sized business and you’re not on Twitter yet, don’t fret. And don’t open an account now. Actions by Google in the past two weeks have decreased the importance of Twitter. And over time, Twitter’s importance will likely diminish. (Or, we could all wake up tomorrow, look at [...]

Is Google Plus worth adding to your marketing mix?

admin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:08:00 +0000

In a word: Yes. Here’s why: Many of us are suffering from Twitter-Facebook over-sharing fatigue. If you look closely, quite a few of the early adopters have stopped participating. The most prominent names still tweet, of course, because they’re either celebrities using it as a megaphone or they’re social media experts whose paycheck depends on [...]

Build web traffic by pushing the right buttons

admin — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:38:25 +0000

To put on your To Do list: Add Twitter’s new “Follow Button” and Google’s “+1 Button” to your site. They sit along side your Facebook “Like Button” as well as buttons that make it easy for your web visitors to Retweet, Digg, Link, StumbleUpon, Buzz, Reddit, Mixx, Vote, Tip, Shout, Kick, Punch, and Pull Hair. [...]

Mobile wars reaching stalemate

admin — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:00:47 +0000

Nielsen reports that, no surprise, the popularity of smartphones – i.e., iPhones, Android devices, Blackberries – continues to grow in the U.S. with total market share reaching 37%. This number will undoubtedly continue to rise. Here’s what doesn’t seem to be changing though: The market share for smartphones running Google’s Android operating system is no longer [...]

Tool to see what iPhone secretly tracks

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:57:58 +0000

In the middle of April, two programmers discovered that the latest operating system powering the iPhone and iPad keeps a log of everywhere you go, recording both the location and time you were there. See NY Times story here. If you’re curious what Apple is recording about you on your device, you can use this [...]

Don’t count out email marketing yet.

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:52:17 +0000

All the data seems to suggest email use is on a permanent downward trend toward irrelevancy, like the U.S. Postal Service. Email is being replaced by social networks, text messaging, and other forms of instant communication. Why take all the necessary steps to send a private email to a few when you can fire off [...]

What size fonts are the most read.

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:00:11 +0000

If you want people to read the text on your website word for word, size does matter. But not in the way you might expect. Testing has shown that smaller type — typically 12 or 13 pixels or 1.0-1.3em for regular text — actually encourages people to read the individual words because the smaller text [...]

No. 1 tip for writing better headlines.

admin — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:27:49 +0000

You’ve likely seen the famous eye-tracking studies showing how visitors tend to read web pages in an “F” pattern. Here’s something those studies don’t emphasize enough but is crucial when writing effective headlines: People don’t read across the entire line. They only really look at the left one-third of the headline. If the first words [...]