Fact Checking

This is of prime importance. To avoid perpetuating false information, you must make sure that you have the facts 100% accurate or at the very least mention that your information was of the “to the best of my knowledge” type. In the newspaper industry, multiple people check and re-check all the factual information in a reporter’s story before printing it. Of course, many bloggers don’t have the luxury of an office staff, but a good substitute would be to check at least 2 independent sources.

News is News, Opinion is Opinion

If you are writing a news piece, you should remain as objective as possible throughout. The intended purpose of news is to offer the reader the facts, so they can then decide for themselves how they feel about it. Stick to the facts, don’t embellish, or sensationalize anything; that is the hallmark of a good news writer and blogger.

Strive for Balance

Even if you just report the facts, be sure to get facts from both sides of the issue whenever possible. Without intending to do so, you could influence the reader’s opinion by omitting the facts from the other side of the equation. For instance, has there ever been a time where you were bombarded with news about a particular issue and formed a strong opinion just from what you’ve read, but then later on heard new information that made you go “Wait a minute! I didn’t know that, this changes the whole issue”? So, just by reporting one side (even though all of it was factual) of the issue, the writer persuaded you by just omitting facts from the opposing view. Good news writers and bloggers don’t do that.

These 3 core concepts are the foundation of every good news writer and blogger. Just because you didn’t study journalism, if you write any kind of news then you are essentially a journalist. Hold yourself to the same standards, and you will be noticed for it.

While many of us purchase Valentine’s day cards for our significant others and perhaps a nice bouquet of flowers Kaitlyn Trigger decided to give her boyfriend a much bigger and involved present, a brand new photo sharing platform.

Kaitlyn’s Lovestagram program is so thoughtful because her boyfriend is Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and it’s his platform she chose to use when creating Lovestagram.

The program is essentially an interactive Valentine’s card maker that implements the Instagram API to create Valentine’s Day cards.

The program works by creating a slideshow of all Instagram photos you share with your special someone by using mutual username tags, photos you took in the same location within one hour of each other and photos where comments have been exchanged. 

Using the program couldn’t be any easier you just sign in to your Instagram account and enter the username of your significant other.

You also don’t have to be dating someone as the program currently works with any username and the platform may soon expand to include cards for other occasions.

What might be most impressive is the fact that the programs creator didn’t want to ask her coding pro boyfriend for help so starting in the Fall 2011 she learned to program in Python, Django, Jinja, HTML, CSS, jQuery and to use Photoshop.

Tumblr has actively been attempting to showcase the networks talents lately, ast week the company hired two veteran journalists to cover the sites best content and now they have hired several emerging fashion bloggers to kick off New York Fashion Week.

Tumblr on Wednesday announced on its staff blog that they have partnered with Milk Studios, a photography and studio conglomerate who will take a team of five “local emerging voices in fashion from Tumblr to cover the events” to cover the events.

Readers of the massive blog network can find information using the NYFW tag or they can follow these five bloggers: Alex, Bryant, Chloe, Lucie and Miguel

News of this type of “intimate” interaction was a smart move for Tumblr after BetaBeat in September broke news of the company’s attempt to monetize New York Fashion Week by selling premium ads to willing brands. BetaBeat wrote at the time:

The proposal asked for $100,000 to have 4 of Tumblr’s “select bloggers” produce 15 posts for the brand’s Tumblr during the week, with the “exact nature of the content to be agreed upon prior to the start of the week.” For $150,000 brands could get ad placement on the official NY Fashion week Tumblr. For $350,000 they could get ad placement on the Tumblr tagged “fashion” page. For $10,000 big fashion brands could spend a little quality time with the 20 select bloggers at a private event. Product placement was also offered “At cost”, with the “influential tastemakers” being promised at a group rate.

Eventually BetaBeat admitted that the plan was still “rough around the edge” and was never implemented, in fact bloggers being targeted were never even notified of the potential move.

In the meantime Tumblr is the perfect platform for covering fashion and photography thanks to the company’s huge emphasis on photo-heavy layouts and micro-niche focus on each Tumblr blog.

This time around Tumblr will not attempt to monetize fashion week and announced:

“It’s just a beautiful portal for folks to feel like they are experiencing the New York Fashion Week. We have five bloggers, all local to New York since New York is an amazing fashion capital, so it’s great to five emerging voices.”

Do you think Tumblr is making the right choice in highlighting top performing bloggers and pushing them to the front of the Tumblr pack?

The request comes one week after Google announced plans to censor blogger platform content in certain countries through specific URL domain protocols. For example a post may be banned in India but still show up in a country where freedom of speech is available.

Speaking about the request Google representative Paroma Roy Chowdhury  noted:

“(Our) review team has looked at the content and disabled this content from the local domains of (Google) search, Youtube and Blogger.”

The dispute arose because of a law passed last year which makes companies responsible for user content posted on websites. Company’s have 36 hours to remove the content if a complaint it filed.

Facebook has also been hit with similar requests and has said they will release a statement of their own in the near future.

In the meantime a civil suit filed by an Islamic scholar on Monday requested that companies submit in writing what steps they have taken to block offensive content and submit their reports in 15 days.  Google for their part has documented how they will block content in a well thought out blog post on the blogger blog.

Once you have signed up for a free trial account you simply install the sites plugin on each of your websites. This plugin essentially gives you access to your blogs from within the ManageWP administration panel.

After the system has been installed you will be asked to add websites to your panel, those websites will then be accessible via the ManageWP login panel. Once installed the system then provides many useful features.

For example you can choose to add and upgrade themes for all of your websites from one screen, removing the need to log into various accounts.  The system also allows users to be bulk added for login purposes.

If you run a network in which posts are added to more than one website at a time ManageWP also provides a “Bulk Add” option for posts and pages. I personally found the “Add New Page” option helpful when creating privacy and copyright polices for various websites.

If you want to add links to a blogroll on each of your sites, perhaps when creating a network of interconnected blogs that option is also provided.

For “Professional” and “Business” level users ManageWP also offers one-click automatic backup of your websites to your server, Amazon S3, Dropbox, FTP or an email address.

The team at ManageWP has also added an elegant Google Analytics setup which allows users to view pageview and other Analytics information directly fro within the ManageWP interface.

Throw in uptime server monitoring, the ability to check SEO settings (backlinks, traffic, Twitter, etc) and the ability to close a sites setup (themes, plugins, etc) and it’s easy to see why a starting price of just $6.30/month for up to 10 websites is worth the price of admission.

Here’s a closer look at the super simple setup for the ManageWP system:

For power users looking for a self-hosted option ManageWP is also willing to work directly with your organization to create a single sign-on setup for a URL location of your choosing. You can email them directly at managewp.com/self-hosted.

Here’s a great demo of the system put together by the programs creators:

ManageWP Tour from ManageWP on Vimeo.

• Both article marketing and guest posting involves writing content that will be posted on someone else’s website.
• Both an article and guest post will almost always have a back link to a URL of the writer’s choosing.

Hmm, not too many similarities now that I have thought it through; even less than I originally thought. However, I can think of plenty of differences:

• There is a big difference (at least in the eyes of the search engines) between an article directory, and a frequently updated blog. Blogs are not seen as content farms, but article directories are. That means that the link juice from an article submission will carry less weight than a relevant guest post on a blog.
• 99% of the blogs that allow guest posts will not allow a post that has been posted somewhere else beforehand. Some don’t care what you do with the post after they publish it on their blog, but I am yet to meet one that allows duplicate content submission on their blog.
• Guest posts are almost always of higher quality than articles; mainly because guest blog owners want content, not 500 word advertisements for your product. If they allow links in the body of the post, the link usually needs to be worked into the content well. The strictness varies on this from blog to blog, but overall it is safe to say.
• Guest posts almost always provoke reader and writer interaction; but how often do you see in-depth discussions in the comments sections of article directory articles? Most of them don’t even have a comments section. This provides the writer with a chance to enhance their credibility with a new audience.
• Article marketing has been plagued with spamming since the day it started. The advent of automatic submission software, article rewriting tools, and article submission services, created a small army of wannabe Internet Marketers spamming directories with 6 billion copies of a rewritten article, that was rewritten from a master rewrite of an Ezine article. Guest posting has far less spamming, and hopefully it will stay that way.

Ultimately, at least from my experience, guest posting offers far more benefits for a writer than article marketing does. For someone who is ONLY looking for traffic to an affiliate link, and nothing more, then I would say article marketing might be a better way to go for that particular objective simply because they are far more likely to get an article published with affiliate links in it than they would a guest post. Guest posting definitely wins out in all the other areas though, for sure.

Sources close to the world’s largest social network say executives at Facebook have already discussed proposed advertising plans with advertising agencies and plan to offer paid “Featured stories” in mobile news feeds as a way to supplement ad space on smaller mobile device displays.

By mixing in sponsored ads with friends feeds users don’t lose screen space and only receive ads that match their interests and the interests of their friends.

Facebook has estimated that almost half of its 845 million users access the network via mobile devices, even one ad served per user per day would mean billions of new ad impressions for the network. 

A source at the Financial Times says Facebook will incentivize advertisers who link their ads back to Facebook pages rather then to off-site locations.

An official announcement is expected at the Facebook event being held in New York on Feb. 29.

Are you worried that Facebook ads will muddle your mobile interface with unwanted information?

After Your 10^th Blog Post, Start a Coaching Program

Listen, experience and knowledge are totally over–rated. In reality, all you need to do to become a “mentor” or a “coach” in your niche is to say that you are! Don’t get all worried about refunds and people eviscerating you for not knowing your butt from your elbow, just read posts and articles by other experts in your niche, and regurgitate them in your own words! So what if your members don’t ever really learn anything new, or that most of them probably know more than you, what’s important here is their recurring $49.95 membership fee.

Talk About Yourself in the Third Person

Nothing says humility like talking about yourself in the third person. When you do that, you make yourself appear as a sort of all-knowing God in your niche. So, for example, if your name is Jim and someone asks if they should use this method or that method, replying with something like “Well, Jim always uses different methods than everyone else, because Jim can do that, because Jim is that good!” really makes you seem down to earth and approachable.

Fight Tooth and Nail with Anyone Who Bad-Mouth’s You

To hell with taking the high-road, people have some nerve coming out publicly against YOU! Setup a Google Alert for your name as the keyword, and this will give you a heads up when anyone mentions you on a blog or forum. Then, once you find the blasphemous jerk, argue with them for hours on end posting comeback after comeback. Be sure to use a lot of foul language; or at the very least, make death threats.

Substitute Regular Posting with Just Guest Posts

The point of doing this is to make sure that you never have to do any real work, and the quality and knowledge of your content’s creators is all over the map from novice to genius. This ensures that your blog never does have a distinctive voice, and just remains a smorgasbord of content from a million different people.

Sell Contextual Paid Links

If possible, make sure all the links you whore out to whoever are from niches known to be plagued with criminals and scammers, such as payday loans, penis enlargement pills, online pharmacies, and forex trading. It would also help to make a separate post for each paid link that has absolutely nothing to do with your blog’s niche.

There you go, do those 5 things and you can rest assured that your blog never reaches the “authority” level. God forbid!

Here’s what Tumblr has to say about the new program:

Every now and then, a post comes along that’s meant for big things. It could be pulling the wraps off your new project, promoting your next show, raising awareness for a cause, or just sharing a truly incredible photo.

Today you’ll have a new option to Highlight those extra-important posts. For one dollar, your post will stand out in the Dashboard with a customizable sticker to make sure your followers take notice!

The new feature is available for each new blog posts and when selected a label appears in your followers’ streams but it does not show up on the front end of the blog.

The program also allows you to choose various different messages that correspond to events, news, products, celebrations, etc.

Users taking advantage of the program will be asked to pay $1 per featured post, a small price to pay if you have a large Tumblr following.

While most offerings on Tumblr are free, including the ability to point your own domain name at Tumblr the site has charged for some added features in the past include the addition of premium themes which rolled out last year.

Here’s a screenshot showing how easy it is to select a post to be featured:

Will you be taking advantage of Tumblr highlighted posts for your Tumblr page?

Well known writers Chris Mohney, SVP of content for BlackBook Media and Jessice Bennett, senior writer and editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast have been hired to cover various areas of content and conversation for the network which includes nearly 44 million blogs.

The task of covering Tumblr won’t be easy, as Bennett told Time:

“Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million, I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.”

The main idea will be to showcase bloggers use Tumblr to better showcase their work in creative, fun and unique ways. The writers will post their stories on the Tumblr staff blog while a new Tumblr site will likely be created to showcase their efforts.

According to Tumblr vice president Andrew McLaughlin readers can expect “real journalism and analysis” and not just “fluff PR.”

Both writers embody the type of professionalism we hope to get out of online content creators these days which means they should be able to provide worthwhile posts that highlight Tumblr users and the company’s achievements without sounding like a post right off the line of a press release service.

In filing a lawsuit against Noah PhoneDog LLC claims he owes them $340,000, the equivalent of $2.50 per follower.

If you’re unfamiliar with the case Kravitz started the Twitter account @Phonedog_Noah while working for several years at PhoneDog, when he left the company in October 2010 he changed the handle to @noahkravitz and kept the 17,000 followers he had amassed during his time at PhoneDog.

Speaking about the courts decision Kravitz’s lawyer Cary Kletter said:

“The Court’s decision yesterday [Monday] in effect means that PhoneDog has met the minimum requirements to survive a motion seeking to throw PhoneDog’s claims out of court, but it was not a decision as to whether or not PhoneDog is entitled to the relief it seeks … Ultimately PhoneDog will be unable to prove its allegations against Mr. Kravitz, and Mr. Kravitz will prevail.”

While some website owners and company’s will be paying close attention to the outcome of the case it should be noted that this isn’t a precedent-setting lawsuit as it will be “fact specific” and judged on the individual merits and similar situations faced by other company’s.

In any case websites that hire bloggers without a full contract in place will be paying close attention to the case to determine the legal merits of their own writers.

Less then a week after Twitter announced the censorship of Tweets in certain parts of the world search giant Google has announced a similar program targeted at the company’s blogger platform.

To reach the company’s new censorship goal GOogle will begin redirecting Blogger users to country-specific URLs for example instead of a Google.com blog in France the content would direct the users to Google.fr.

By adding country specific URLs Google can censor a blog post in one country but leave it untouched for example in the United States.

In a Blogger blog post titled Why does my blog redirect to a country-specific URL?” Google explains that the program is meant to limit censored content:

“Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you’re reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or “ccTLD.” For example, if you’re in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location.”

To see non-affected pages users can go to Google.com/ncr (no country redirect) which will place a short term cookie in the users browser to prevent country based redirects while allowing a work around against censorship.

If you would like to see a non-affected page, you can direct to google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”), which places a short term cookie that temporarily prevents geographical redirection.

Google says they don’t want to violate local laws but still want to promote the Blogger platform in various countries, hence their  decision.

The Blogs I Looked Up

From left to right, down the list in order, the blogs covered were Blog Herald, Boing Boing, Copyblogger, Engadget, John Chow, and Problogger. The thumbnails are in sequential order, so that you see the earliest snapshot of the blog to the most recent. To view each snapshot, just click on the thumbnail to load the full-size version of it. If you roll the mouse over each thumbnail, it will tell you what blog the snapshot is from and which date as well. This project was a lot of fun, and I could have gone on forever with it.

One thing that we can all take away from this example is the amazing amount of hard work and dedication the owners of these blogs have committed to their sites. We sometimes forget that everyone has a starting point, and everyone at one time was a nobody. Even Google. Now, I am gonna bet that after you read this post, you are going to head over to the Wayback Machine and start looking up all kinds of sites! Go for it.

If you’re unfamiliar with Pinterest the program essentially allows users to create “pinboards” which are the equivalent of an online bulletin board for popular categories such as food, wedding planning, home decorating, etc. As users find interesting information online they can use the “Pin It” bookmarklet or their iPhone app to save things both from online and offline solutions.

As more users create bulletin boards and share their findings with friends traffic is sent to retailers. That traffic according to Experian Hitwise is driven by 58% women which is of special interest to advertisers, brands and retailers. 

According to analytics firm Compete in December 2011 the site attracted 7.51 million unique users, that’s a fourfold increase from September 2011.

While still not the most popular referrer among all brands the company has helped some product fly off the shelf.

Here’s the infographic explaining the Pinterest rise to fame as a top retail referrer:

Do you use Pinterest? If you do what type of information do you typically discover using the popular internet bookmarking platform?

I would like to preface this list by saying a few things: First, I do not write for most of the editors that I have quoted below, so no use looking up my articles and trying to figure out which editors said what (I know you have a lot of time to do that). Second, the majority of these quotes were not taken out of context; in most cases, this was the only thing written in the email. Third, this is all completely true and was in no way exaggerated or made up (I couldn’t make this up if I tried).

So, without further ado, I give to you the top ten craziest things I’ve heard from editors:

1. (Automated Message) Thank you for emailing *name of blog.* If you sent an article to this address, I will be sitting here wondering why you felt you were too good to read the guidelines.
2. I don’t edit on Fridays.
3. Thanks. I probably won’t email you back because this is a busy time of year for me.
4. In response to the picture you will find on my Twitter and gravatar: Can you send another picture? You look like you may have been drinking in the one you sent us because it looks like you were at a party.
5. You are the f#$%ing s*#%@ !!!
6. Oh…looks like you didn’t see the note at the bottom of the page. I no longer accept guest posts honey. But it’s okay it happens to everyone!
7. After explaining some of the revisions necessary: Anyways, do you want to get coffee sometime?
8. Wow your article is so great! Can you write a few for us every day?
9. Despite the fact that the blog had guidelines for guest posting: You want to post an article on our site? I guess we can take a look…
10. This is really only funny to me because I had no idea what it meant upon first reading. I’m a sheltered American I suppose: If you could do one like that say once a fortnight I would be happy :)

Now I would love to have a little bit of fun with this article. What are some of the craziest things you have ever heard from some of your editors?

Photo Credit: vibranthealthworld.com layoutsparks.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to credit card processing. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including document software to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business information directory, Business.com.

I personally find that InstaBG is great for photographers who want to showcase their most recent digitally stored photographs with very little effort.

To get started you’ll first visit InstaBG.com where you will be greeted with the following display:

Once you have clicked ‘Sign in with Twitter Account’ you will need to sign into your Twitter account or given the program permission if you’ve already signed in.

Once signed in you are met with a display screen full of options used to create your Twitter background. The first option will be your most important if you plan to make use of your own Instagram account to showcase your photos. At this point use the “User ID” field and put in your InstagramID. This will tell the program to pull all of your pictures.

The next option is to allow for Auto Update either once a day or with no update. If you plan to upload photos regularly or you just want the Twitter background that’s generated to place your photos in a different order every single day you will want to leave this option “On.”

Next you can use the “New” feature setting to showcase your newest photos or the Popular setting to group by how many people like photos or the Random option to show various photos from your collection each da.

For the Layout I have always chosen the “Small” option because I like the look a bunch of small photos give to the page.

For spacing I have also always chosen “No” because I like the collage look with no spacing however this will be up to your personal preference.

Finally you can display “Date” of the photo being uploaded or the “# Of Likes” a photo has received which fits right in with the most popular option.

Once you have chosen all of your options and click “Preview” the box to the right will show you what your finished Twitter account will look like.  Finally just click the “Set This Image To Twitter” button that will appear at the bottom of the preview pane and you’re in business.

As for the final product? Here’s my personal @TechObsessed Twitter account which utilizes InstaBG functionality:

So there you have it using InstaBG you can literally have a self-updating photography profile right on your Twitter account with almost no work on your part.

Opt-In Incentive

Let’s face it; people aren’t going to join your mailing list because they think you’re a swell person. You see, people have been programmed to be automatically suspicious and reluctant to give out any personal information; including their email address. So, for them to give a total stranger their email address, it would be going against what they think is the safe choice, and if you want them to do that then you have to motivate them. The best way to do that is to give them something for free. EBooks work great; templates too, short reports as well, and even software. Creating a free product to giveaway is out of the scope of this email marketing kit, but it is something you will need to do before you will see any decent amount of opt-ins.

Email Marketing List Management Services

The first thing you need is a way to manage your list and automated bulk mailings. There are third-party services that can do this for you. Some people call them autoresponder services, but today’s services handle a lot more than just managing your autoresponder. Most of them handle list management, web forms, multiple lists, social media sharing, free scripts, and more. Nearly all of them have a free option that is limited to a certain number of subscribers, which can range from 200 to 2000 depending on the service and fluctuating terms. If you are just starting out, then build up your list until you max out your limit, and then upgrade to a paid plan as you go.

• Aweber
• Mail Chimp
• Campaign Monitor
• Email Brain
• Stream Send
• Benchmark Email
• Get Response
• Constant Contact
• iContact
• Graphic Mail
• Boomerang

Squeeze Page Resources

Now that you have an email list, you need a place to put your web form (a.k.a opt-in form) so you can collect email addresses. Most marketers use squeeze pages. They are called squeeze pages because the only objective on the page is to get the user’s email address. If done correctly, there should be no other traffic leaks on the page, just the opt-in form. So you are virtually “squeezing” them through this one hole; the opt-in form. In this group I will break the resources down into sub-groups because squeeze pages have a few different elements.

Squeeze Page Templates (Free)

These are templates available at no cost throughout the web. As a blog owner, you have a couple options for how you want to implement the squeeze page: you can do it as a separate HTML page or directory apart from your blog and then just link to it from the blog, or you can use a theme that was made especially for creating squeeze pages with your blogging platform (such as WordPress, for example). These free templates are for squeeze pages that are separate from the blog and have their own HTML page and/or directory on your domain. You will see a lot of people on the web refer to landing and sales pages as squeeze pages; they are NOT the same thing. Squeeze pages use different tactics and designs than landing and sales pages do. So don’t use landing page templates for squeeze pages, your results will suffer for it if you do.

• Free Squeeze Page Templates from Fresh Squeeze
• CashRevelations 12 Free Squeeze Page Template Pack
• Cashrev No:1 – Free Video Squeeze Page
• Free WordPress Squeeze Page Theme From Andy Phillips
• Free Video Squeeze Page Template by Albert Hallado
• 3 Free Squeeze Page Templates by Tellman Knudson and Shawn Casey
• Multiple Free Squeeze Page Templates from Leslie
• 24 Free Squeeze Page Templates
• Free Squeeze Page Templates By Richard Legg
• Free Squeeze Page Template by PluginSqueeze
• Three Free Video Squeeze Page Templates
• Free Squeeze Page Templates Pack
• Free Squeeze Page Template by Ryan Deiss
• Free Squeeze Page Generator by Robert Puddy

Squeeze Page Templates (Paid)

The following squeeze page templates are not free, and can be considered premium templates. They are also meant to be separate from your blog on their own separate HTML page. The premium templates have a lot of quality graphics, custom scripts, and other features that you wouldn’t likely find on any free template.

• Squeeze Page Instant
• Hot Video Squeeze Templates
• Killer Video Squeeze Pages
• Easy Squeeze Pro

Squeeze Page Themes for WordPress

Some blog owners want to create their squeeze pages from within the WordPress dashboard. For that you can use special themes designed to facilitate the creation of squeeze pages and other marketing template pages right inside WordPress.

• Optimize Press
• Squeeze Theme
• Flex Squeeze
• Squeeze Boss

Squeeze Page Education

Okay, once you get the squeeze page architecture up, it is time for the copy and overall design (i.e. where to place things, above the fold or under the fold, etc.). The following articles and blog posts are some of the best written on the art of squeeze page design and copywriting; I suggest you read all of it.

• 7 Steps to a Squeeze Page That Works
• Copywriting Makeover: How I Optimized The Onward Studios Squeeze Page
• Tips on Writing Great Copy for Squeeze Pages and Sales Pages
• Creating Hyper-responsive Marketing Without Hype
• Anatomy of a High Converting Squeeze Page

Autoresponder Marketing Resources

When you setup your squeeze page, don’t start collecting emails until you have at least a month’s worth of messages in the autoresponder queue ready to go out. Why? Well, unless you keep in contact regularly, email addresses tend to go stale and inactive after a sustained period of no contact from you. So, once they join your list, you want them to be getting emails from you right away and on a regular basis. Writing the autoresponder series is an underground religion and lost art, but it is something that you can do pretty effectively if you learn how. Of course I would say to outsource it to a copywriter, most definitely, but not everyone has that option financially; especially if they are new to web marketing to begin with. Here is a nice repository of autoresponder tips.

• Meet the Lazy Marketer’s Best Friend: The Email Autoresponder
• 4 Types of AutoResponder Series and The One You Should Absolutely Avoid
• How to Write a Super-Sized Autoresponder Series
• How to Build an Affiliate Autoresponder Sequence without “Burning” a List

WordPress Email Marketing Related Plug-Ins

WordPress is great for so many things, and such is the case when it comes to email marketing. Nearly every day I see another email marketing related plug-in being released. Here are some of the best ones that you may want to have a look at.

• Popup Domination (This is an extremely powerful and effective tool to use, but be careful not to overuse it)
• WP Autoresponder And Newsletter Plugin
• Benchmark Email WP Plugin
• MailChimp WordPress Plugin
• Newsletter Plugin for WP (Boost Opt-in Rate)
• Opt-in Pop for WordPress
• Viper Bar
• Aweber Web Form Plugin for WP

Email Marketing Blogs to Learn From

Email marketing isn’t at all new; neither is blogging. Therefore, many blogs have popped up over the years in the email marketing genre, and I suggest you read them regularly and add them to your RSS reader. I placed the RSS feed of each one next to the blog name for you.

• Adventures in Email Marketing (RSS)
• Email Experience (RSS)
• Email Marketing Reports (RSS)
• Retail Email (RSS)
• Social Email Marketing (RSS)
• Email Fail: Case Studies of Failed Email Campaigns (RSS)

There you go; you have everything you would need to get rolling on your own mailing list. I will expand this as often as possible, so check back for more resources when you get a chance. Good luck!

Realizing the success of the program LinchPin SEO has created an infographic that shows users exactly how to market their items on the interest website and they created their unique infographic using the Pinterest setup.

As the infographic rightfully points out Pinterest can be used for a variety of things suck as promoting sales and promitions, offering coupons to readers and even answering questions such as “how much should you spend on an engagement ring?”

Because Pinterest is almost exactly like a giant infographic for readers a business can easily create a visual flowchart that not only sells a product but also provides tons of information about that product at the same time.  A business can easily post information about a product, pin photos to a page and even offer video accompanied by a coupon.

Here’s the Pinterest business marketing Infographic:

Facebook has nearly captured the market for 1 billion social media users so it only makes sense that some of the countries top brands would want to turn that loyalty to the network into a rewards program and that’s exactly what’s happening at Dunkin’ Donuts, Red Robin, Taco Bell and Quiznos.

Those company’s have signed deals with loyalty marketing start-up Plink who will announced a new quick-serve brand test for partners on Thursday.

The program works by tracking how much money Facebook users spend at each location and then rewarding them with Facebook Credits which can be used to make in-app purchases in such games as CityVille and FarmVille.

To get started users simply register their credit or debit card at Plink.com and then when they use that specific card at participating locations they receive Facebook credits. 

Speaking to ClickZ Plink co-founder Peter Vogel said the company will target Facebook ads at people who have already “liked” the brands on the social site. Plink will also appear in various paid ads on different games to help gain early traction for the platform.

Do you like the concept behind Plink? Given how simple they’re making it to join the program it could be a great addition to cash back rewards, airline miles and other perks you might already have available to you through your credit card provider.

Facebook on Wednesday suspended secondary market sharing of the company’s stock in what is very likely a sign that the company plans to go public with an IPO in the near future.

A letter was sent from Facebook’s law firm, Fenwick & West  stating that shares of the company would stop trading immediately although a reason for that decision is still not known.

A recent report said Facebook would release its IPO in May and in an interview with Bloomberg Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo. said:

“Facebook and companies who do this don’t want to expose themselves to lawsuits related to the fact that some people had it before others and were able to trade on it,” and “The best way to protect yourself is to have no one able to trade.”

While suspension of trading on company stock isn’t a surefire IPO possibility it’s definitely a good sign.

Facebook has been trading on secondary markets for years, US Law allows a company to trade with company’s such as Sharespost as long as there is less then 500 investors involved in the process.

Facebook valuation based on Sharespost trading is estimated at $81.2 billion, if that value holds true the company will release one of the top 20 IPO valuations of all time.

Reps from Facebook are not commenting on the suspension of secondary market trading at this time.

Video views continue to increase particularly in the smartphone and Smart TV market where users are able to download YouTube videos faster and with better display quality.

YouTube has also revealed that uploads to the service have greatly increased from 48 hours each minute in May to 60 hours each minute at the current time.

While YouTube users are watching more videos through the service YouTube users only spend 15 minutes each day watching videos on the site while American TV watchers consume four to five hours watching TV every day on average. It’s that low level of engagement that has led investors to question YouTube’s earnings capabilities. 

During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings calls Google didn’t break out earnings based directly on YouTube but they did report $5 billion earned in display ads on an annualized run rate basis.

To possibly increase user engagement YouTube has set aside $100 million for featured celebrity channels from the likes of Amy Poehler and Ashton Kutcher among other stars of screen and sports.

With the TV industry taking in $60 billion per year in ad spend YouTube and other online video providers are looking to quickly increase their own ad market which currently receives $3 billion per year in video ad spend.

User-Generated Content Sites and SOPA

One of the complaints that you’ll consistently hear about the SOPA bill is that it is way too generalized and all-encompassing. For instance, under SOPA, a site will be considered dedicated to the theft of U.S. intellectual property if it is “primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates copyright infringement”. Well, take YouTube for example; the online video site serves an average of 100 million videos every single day. The majority of it is uploaded by users, who can remain anonymous with minimal effort if they so choose. Under SOPA, YouTube can be considered a site that is primarily designed in a way that enables copyright infringement because of those reasons. Totally nuts. Blog owners might find themselves harboring illegal content through RSS, and pay the price for it; who knows anymore? If you give umbrella-like power to the government, then they will abuse it; history has taught us this much. Sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Wikipedia, and Facebook have immeasurably reinvented this country, and the world; putting them in the line of fire is just unfair and wrong.

Guilty by Association: Pirate Bay and Other “Dirty” Websites

Make no mistake, the Swedish Bit-torrent website Pirate Bay is certainly a major target of the SOPA effort. The owners have consistently thumbed their noses at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the American copyright laws. All efforts to shut it down permanently have failed, and it still operates with impunity; a fact that certainly infuriates the MPAA. If SOPA was passed, then technically just by linking to The Pirate Bay in an article or news story could be considered “facilitating copyright infringement” and earn you a court order and possible prosecution. Surely, there has got to be a better way to do it.

SOPA and Small Businesses Startups

Under SOPA, small startups would be severely negatively affected. The possibility of being prosecuted just for doing business with, or linking to another business that is found to be committing copyright infringement, creates a whole new set of obstacles for any startup. There will be legal concerns, and the need to constantly police ever single piece of communication and content that goes out their doors. All of that takes more money, and lots of it. Not to mention that it would create paranoia at the very top, and choke creativity as it trickles down. Maybe if we were in Iran this would seem perfectly normal, but we’re not.

In its current form, SOPA is certainly a disaster, and quite possibly beyond help regardless of how many times it’s amended. The government and entertainment industry should not run the Internet; but they could start by going after the criminals who are actually perpetuating this problem. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) isn’t perfect either; but it is a step in the right direction. The bill places the enforcement in the hands of intellectual property experts, the US International Trade Commission, and not the Justice Department. Also, it places a strong emphasis on going after the money involved in online piracy. After all, the reason piracy is committed is financial gain. Shut down their site, they’ll get another site. Take away their money, and you’ve scored a huge blow; guaranteed.

Speaking about the decision to keep the bill off the table Smith noted:

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy.” He went on to add: “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

Lamar Smith says he’s still committed to protecting “American intellectual property and innovation” but he stopped short of saying how the bill could be changed to reach that goal.

Under the current form of SOPA critics have argued that the bill would allow company’s to easily shut down sites that disagreed with its opinions, while pushing up the cost of community driven sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit by forcing owners to monitor activity in near real-time. 

Lashing out against the decision to postpone his Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) told the LA Times:

“Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy.”

In the meantime opponents of PIPA and SOPA say internet support to stop the bill from the likes of Wikipedia, Reddit and other popular destinations that went “dark” on Wednesday have led more people to understand what at one point was a complex technological based bill that could have passed had some of the top founders of online technology not stood up to have their voices heard.

In the meantime many of the top online minds have suggested that PIPA and SOPA need to be completely redrafted in order to work.

At the same time even without SOPA and PIPA the United States government proved this week that basic DMCA laws that already exist our effective in dealing with egregious copyright violations as they shut down the very popular file sharing website MegaUpload.com.

Do you think SOPA and PIPA can be simply re-drafted or do new bills need to be created all together?

When you take into consideration the fact that Google+ was reporting just 40 million users in October 2011 the improvement in usage is astounding.

In December 2011 Google+ watcher Paul Allen predicted that the social network had 62 million users while Experian Hitwise has predicted 400 million users by the end of 2012.

According to Page:

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

“By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.”

During the meeting Larry Page refused to estimate how many users the company would have by the end of 2012 but did say that users are “very engaged with our products — over 60% of them engage daily, and over 80% weekly.”

Unfortunately Page did not state which Google products are engaged daily, he could have been referring to Google+, Gmail, Google Maps or various other Google products including Google Android.

In the meantime Google+ still trails far behind Facebook which is expected to reach 1 billion users by August 2012.

Have you jumped on the Google+ bandwagon yet? Why or why not?

While late May looks to be the much anticipated day a source close to the plans tells All Things D:

“This IPO planning could all change in a New York minute to another month.” 

Company’s often wait for favorable conditions based on market conditions before they jump into the IPO space, both Groupon and Linked in delayed their IPOs last year for that very reason.

Once launched the company’s expected $100 billion offering will likely be one of the 10 biggest IPOs of all time.

Also planning to make its public debut is Yelp which is expected to fetch upwards of $100 million. Yelp is expected to go public in the summer and analysts believe the company will closely watch for a Facebook IPO in order to gain some momentum from investors who are excited about Facebook’s jump onto the public marketplace.