Erik Qualman's Blog, page 524

Today’s Biz and Buzz

THE STORY: AT&T and NSA BFF’s

Two years ago, America was able to thank Edward Snowden for leaking top secret NSA documents. We knew that companies were enlisted to help the NSA but no companies were said to be affiliated…until now.

Edward Snowden Phones A Friend

Edward Snowden may have phoned a few friends at AT&T. While it is still possible multiple tech companies leaked some info, AT&T was considered to be unique and

“especially productive” in a BFF kind of way.  According the The New York Times, NSA said “This is a partnership not a contractual relationship” when referring to their relations with AT&T. When caught red handed AT&T declined to say whether or not they helped in the leak saying that, “They don’t comment on measures of national security”.  Wonder what AT&T thought while they helped wiretap the United Nations. Yikes.

DA SKIM

From 2003-2013, AT&T was hand-in-hand helping Snowden leak classified documents along with billions of emails which started a national controversy on privacy (Source: CNN).  While it is unclear whether or not AT&T still has a relationship with NSA, we know for sure they were at least dating for awhile.

Quote of the Day: No So Amaz-ing

“You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk,” said former Amazon employee in this New York Times article. The expose describes a culture that makes basic training with the marines seem like a day at the beach.

Amazon may be the #1 retailer but it appears their internal culture is far from being #1. Hint: they have secret tools that allow you to tattle tale on your boss and one employee was quoted as saying “Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.”

 

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Get on the Social Media Travel Adventures

If you and your family are looking for some adventure in these final weeks of summer, then social media has plenty to offer in the travel department.

Social media is a great resource for finding vacation ideas as well as travel advice.

With social journeys in mind, here are a number of ways you can use social media to plan your next great adventure:

Gathering First-Hand Advice

Whether you’re traveling solo or taking your family along for the ride, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great social sites for gathering first-hand advice. You can reach out to friends, family, or anyone who wants to talk about their past vacations.

You can post or tweet questions asking your social followers where they went on their last vacation.

Or you can be as specific as asking social audiences about any family-friendly travel destinations they’ve visited.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, which is where Instagram comes into play.

You can sift through travel photos from users you follow in order to get inspired. When you come across an interesting locale, reach out via Instagram to find out more.

Reading Reviews

Once you have a destination, or destinations in mind, the next step in planning your adventure is reading up on travel reviews.

As the following article looks at, you can search for socially trending articles on top summer destinations in the U.S. or read up on specific reviews from sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.

Yelp is great for finding reviews on restaurants and hotels near your travel destination. Likewise, TripAdvisor provides reviews on hotels as well as area attractions.

Both social sites feature reviews from actual travelers and customers, which is extremely helpful information to have during the decision-making process.

Visiting Travel Blogs

Before you set off on your adventure, you should first visit travel blogs that relate to your travel destination.

There are a number of travel blogs on the web that offer great advice on the traveling and vacationing process as well as tips about certain destinations.

Many professional travel companies such as Condé Nast and Lonely Planet feature travel blogs that cover a number of destinations and travel topics.

Likewise, many travel bloggers and vacationers such as you create blogs based on their adventures.

Both options are helpful if you’re looking for more information on certain travel-friendly areas of the world.

Reaching Out in the Moment

Just because you’ve reached your destination, that doesn’t mean you should stop seeking social assistance. In fact, most travelers post pictures and comments about their vacation while they’re in the moment.

You can use social media to share moments from your travels, but you can also use social sites like Facebook and Twitter to ask for advice while you’re traveling.

Whether you’re looking for a great restaurant with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge or you’re looking for places to windsurf in Costa Rica, chances are your social followers have the answer.

When you’re ready to see the world, take advantage of social media when planning your travels.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Viacheslav Blizniuk at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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15 Tips to Get your Email Marketing Campaign Ramped Up for Christmas

Marketing during the holidays can be tough, because every company is out there trying to get that holiday business and a piece of the money that people are readily spending.  Therefore, the marketing attempts must be timely and directed at the appropriate audience.  Make sure your campaign is relevant and something that is trending or important during the current season.

1) Send an eCard.  Who doesn’t love getting Christmas cards?  Or to be politically correct, holiday cards? One way to get your marketing on track and your business more exposure is by sending Christmas eCards for business rejuvenation.  The eCard can serve a dual purpose by wishing them and their family a wonderful holiday season, and at the same time can encourage them to make a purchase by providing them with a special Holiday Discount.

2) Focus on your subject line. Only 15% of people actually open their advertising emails, so work, hard on your subject line to get the customers to actually open the email and read the various advertising content you have made.

3) Sound urgent.  Put a date in there or something like “selling out fast” to get the attention of your customers.  This urgency may make them consider looking and determining if they care that the product is indeed selling out.

4) Countdown to Christmas.  When sending out emails, dates of how many days ‘til Christmas can remind them that time is of the essence and create a sense of urgency.  You can also post subject lines about guaranteeing shipment by Christmas as well.

5) Responsive email.  Make sure that your email is responsive in the mobile world.  Over half of the people opening emails are doing so from mobile devices.  Make sure your website is capable of mobile content and easy to fill boxes for any input required.

6)  Start Early.  When getting a campaign together, it must be marketed on time and way before the holiday event because there are shipping concerns that will turn off customers if your company is too late in the game.

7) Personalize.  Find something they ordered recently or years that they have been a customer to show how much you appreciate their loyalty.  It is imperative that you use their name and anything else you can to show them you know who they are and that you personally care about them as customers.

Be Creative.  Use the holiday to help you win over your audience.  Using graphics and Christmas-themed email design can make the customer feel the holiday spirit and actually consider opening the email from your company

9)  Use geo-marketing.  Show a landmark in the country you are sending the email as the background photo of your email, so that they can see that you know where they are coming from. If they live inFrance, maybe a snow-covered Eiffel tower would be nice or a snow-covered Statue of Liberty.

10) Limited-time offers.  Consider marketing on limited-time items.  Having contests and the first 100 customers to reply to your email is eligible for a free product or discount.  Making the customer feel important and special is very important in marketing.

11) Give something free.  Give samples of other products or recipes to people that purchase an item related to the recipe.  This type of add-on costs very little but means a lot to the customer.

12) Add numbers.  The New Yorker article states that adding numbers into written alpha text can break up the monotony and cause the viewer to be drawn in.  This is what we want, so add a number to your subject line and see what happens.

13) Make a cliffhanger.  Send an email stating something big is going to happen, so check your email on this date.  Amazon did this marketing campaign before their Amazon Prime Day to drum up curiosity and business for the big day.  They basically sent out a save the date like a wedding and it was extremely effective.

14) Run a photo contest.  Everyone likes a chance at winning, so run a contest that involves your customers and your products.

15) Resend unopened emails.  You can track the rates of unopened emails in your campaign and then re-send by tweaking the subject line in hopes they will open it this time.

These tips should get you on the way to a successful email marketing campaign that brings in customers.

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New iPhone Launch – Da Skim

THE STORY

Apple has a habit of announcing new product releases in September…so August is rumor month in high schools as well as Silicon Valley.

Put on your iCalendar

The Apple Fall event is rumored to be Wednesday, September 9th. So what? This is when a new generation of iPhones is set to be announced (source: CNN). Think better camera, faster processor and force touch display.

What Else?

According to Buzzfeed, a 12.9 inch “pro” version of the iPad could be unveiled as well as an update to Apple TV.

Da SKIM

Investors, analysts and Apple fanboys are counting down the days until this event. Will the new iPhone models boost revenue? They need to. iPhone sales have been lower than expected and iWatch sales have been sucking wind. Spoiler alert – no likely as these are just incremental changes. Seems Apple and CEO Tim Cook are still looking for a post Steve Jobs win.

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6 Common Mistakes: Why Your Landing Pages Are Not High Converting

Every marketer and entrepreneur wants to create landing pages that will actually make site visitors turn into paying customers. However, for one or another reason, even the most skilled professionals make silliest mistakes that cost them dearly. Negligence usually results in loss of potential customers, so it would be smarter to pay attention and avoid at least six of the most common mistakes – and you will increase your conversions.

Mistake 1: Irrelevant Products

Nothing could be less smart than placing different products in paid advertising campaigns and on the landing page, but some people do this. Don’t follow in their footsteps. If your potential customer seeks one thing and then sees something else entirely after clicking on the direct ad, well, this visitor is unlikely ever to become your client.

Mistake 2: Sloppy Design

Unmatched colors, weird or unreadable fonts – even if your product is the best choice on the whole world market, bad-quality design might chase away every single client. The landing page must be user-friendly. If you are a beginner in e-commerce who does absolutely everything on his own, at least try to create such a design for your landing pages that wouldn’t make one’s eyes ache. DIY landing page creator tools like this one can make your life easier.

Mistake 3: Defective Content

There are certain rules one has to follow in order to make his landing pages’ content seem right. The client needs to get short and precise information on the product, and he (or she) has to see it right after he clicked on the ad. There is no need to write essays in literary style in order to describe the product or the service, but the content needs to be qualitative. No grammar mistakes, clear sentences and something catchy that might hook attention of the customer – these conditions guarantee you success.

Mistake 4: Negative Information

It goes without saying that there must be absolutely no negative information on the landing pages. Nevertheless, one might often see such sentences as “we are not going to spam you”, “your private information will not be given to the third parts”, “this is not a fraud”. Why would anyone give the client the mere idea of the possibility of such things? They shouldn’t even be mentioned.

Mistake 5: Absence of Forms and Call-to-Action

The customer should always be able to contact you and also be aware of what he should do to get the desired product or service. Create short, easy-to-fill-in forms in order to allow customer to leave his e-mail and contact you directly. It would also be wise to either make detailed, yet simple instruction on how to make an order on your website, or simply create a nicely visible element on the page (like a huge button) with the words “Make an order” on it. It’s you who needs to get his services and/or products sold, so make it simple for the customer to stay in touch with you and buy things from you.

Mistake 6: Incompatible Mobile Design

It goes without saying that every marketer or brand should take the time and make the landing page mobile friendly. Lack of responsive design or incompatibility to mobile devices will result in poor conversions and lost leads. Make your mobile landing pages optimized and you will see the growth of your conversion rates.

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Drive Consumers to Your E-Commerce Site with Engaging Content

Keeping website traffic consistently high at your e-commerce site is essential. It’s also important to figure out ways to make guests linger. The longer they stay on your site, the more likely they are to buy something. Keep reading to get some ideas for how you can use interesting content as a primary element of your online marketing strategy.

Use Instructional or Creative Videos

Videos tend to perform very well on social media. That’s why it’s worthwhile to consider making some themed videos about your products, posting them on social media and featuring a call-to-action that encourages people to click over to your site and actually buy something.

DollarShaveClub.com, an e-commerce club that sends razors to subscribers every month, did this very well with a video that has racked up millions of views. With its irreverant yet fascinating tone, this clip clearly caters to the website’s target audience, all while explaining just why people should get their razors through the mail instead of just going to the drugstore.

Attend to the Needs Your Users Have

It’s crucial to make sure your content fills the needs of your users, even if they don’t initially realize those needs exist. Doing that allows you to position your content as something that’s truly helpful, rather than something created to simply drive up profits.

Perhaps more importantly though, if you post content that has genuine value and clear appeal to your audience, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a thought leader in your industry. A fashion and lifestyle website called Dainty Hooligan does that especially well with its longform pieces that feature easy-to-digest text, plus associated images to break up the content.

In addition to having a call to action that encourages people to start shopping and use their newly acquired knowledge, the end of the informative content is complete with social media sharing buttons. Those are smart to include if you’re serious about making your content have a lifespan that’s as lengthy as possible.

Do Something Unexpected

Outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia has made waves several times with a multi-year campaign that encourages people to keep wearing clothes that are still functional, rather urging them to buy new things. Usually, the campaign reaches a peak duriing Black Friday, when consumerism tends to be celebrated.

The company has held clothing swaps, and created a special website that even includes a short film about using clothes thoroughly. The website has several profiles of customers who have faithfully used their Patagonia gear for several years or even longer. There are also tips about how people can repair their clothing, plus sites where wearers can go to recycle the threads once they’ve served their purpose.

This may seem like a counterintuitive approach, but consider it’s an uncommon but effective way to emphasize longevity. When a person buys Patagonia clothing, he or she can expect it to be a great long-term investment that’ll be functional for much longer than one season. When you think about the rugged, outdoors-loving people that make up a large portion of the brand’s customer base, it shouldn’t be hard to see why this tactic really resonates.

Tap Into Passions

The arrival of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte is a sure sign that fall is on the way. The drink also has a very loyal fanbase, and that fact did not escape the brand’s marketing experts. They gave the drink its own hashtag (#PSL), which doubles as the drink’s unique acronym that gets scribbed onto the side of cups to identify the beloved beverage inside.

Furthermore, Starbucks has also held a location-based competition where the winning place would be the first place that year to have the drink available for purchase. To take part, guests had to do specific interactive activities that had points associated with them. The winning city got the drink a week earlier than normal that season.

Although the game was based on Facebook, it’s very likely that the campaign encouraged people to go to the coffee brand’s website, and certainly feel tempted to stop into physical locations once the famous flavored coffee made it onto the menu.

Thanks to these tips and case studies, you should have some great ideas on how to improve your own e-commerce content so it strikes a chord with visitors. Keep in mind, there’s not one approach that’s universally successful. The secret is to thoroughly understand what makes your audience tick, and to create content that matches those characteristics.

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How to Create a Kick-Ass Marketing Email

Marketing emails are the modern equivalent of a good, old-fashioned flyer. Creating a marketing email means you can send hundreds of flyers to targeted recipients at the click of a button in the hope that some of them click on the links and buy the product. It is a low cost method of drumming up business and generating buzz, but if you haven’t quite cracked the art of writing a killer marketing email, your success rate won’t be all that good and your emails will probably be deleted instead of read.

Photo by Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net

So if you are looking to expand your customer base, here are a few tips to help you compose marketing emails that really work.

Be Polite

First of all, before you start thinking of creative new ways to sell your products or services, remember that politeness is the key to success. You need to be careful about who you target with marketing emails. Generally speaking, people don’t appreciate unsolicited emails so make sure your recipients have signed up to receive emails from your company.

The aim of the game is to be added to the recipients contact list so that your email never ends up in their SPAM folder, or worse still, blocked by their ISP. Make it easy for the recipient to do this by including instructions at the top of your first email.

Memorable Emails

There is nothing wrong with plain. Bland food is unlikely to upset a delicate stomach and plain garments are perfect for the workplace. Plain marketing emails, however, are rarely successful, so to attract a readers’ attention, you need to ramp it up a little.

Interesting images and graphics catch the eye and encourage people to read the body of the email. Responsive email designs look great on all devices, especially the smaller screens of smartphones and mini tablets. And the more attractive a marketing email is, the more likely it is to generate a positive response.

Mix It Up

The type of content you include in marketing email will depend on what you are selling, but it is a good idea to mix up text and graphics. You should also keep it concise and straight to the point. Nobody has time to read long emails these days, so don’t put your call to action right at the bottom of a long, rambling message.

Avoid Sell, Sell, Sell

If the only emails you send out are sales messages, your email list will soon get fed up. It is important to mix up hard sell emails with interesting non-sales content. Auto-responders are useful in this regard. They allow you to schedule content over the course of a few months so you can send out regular newsletters and build up a relationship with your clients. That way, when the time comes to let them know about a new product, they will be more receptive.

If you need inspiration, check out marketing emails in your inbox and see which ones grab your attention, and then incorporate the best bits in your business’s marketing email designs.

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Twitter officially drops 140-character limit… for direct messages

Mashable - Twitter users can officially send one another direct messages topping 140 characters starting Wednesday.

Twitter is phasing in the change across Android, iOS and web-based platforms on Wednesday, lasting over the next few weeks. Instead of 140 characters, the social network previously said in June the new character maximum would be 10,000.

“You can now chat on (and on) in a single direct message, and likely still have some characters left over,” the company wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.

Twitter also emphasized in the post that while direct messages can now run really, reallylong, tweets will still be subject to the same 140-character limit they’ve always been.

In recent months, Twitter has made numerous tweaks to the social network, including direct messages.

Twitter originally announced it would remove the 140-character limit from direct messages back in June, the same day former CEO Dick Costolo announced he would step down.

Direct messages have long played second fiddle to tweets, but in recent months, Twitter has tried to broaden its appeal to more people, enabling group messaging in January andallowing users to receive direct messages from anyone on the network — just by checking an option in settings — beginning in April.

In doing so, Twitter isn’t just trying to make direct messaging more compelling at a time when messaging overall is dominated by Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp — all of which report larger user bases than Twitter. It’s trying to make Twitter more appealing overall, following recent months of slow user growth, management upheaval and questions about the company’s longevity.

Article by JP Mangalindan for Mashable 

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How Secure Are Our Online Communications?

Any communication is open to security issues and we all regularly hear about high profile hacking cases in the news. The Identity Theft Resource Centre records these security breakdowns and has reported that between 2005 and the present day, in the USA alone, there have been 5,377 individual breaches which resulted in the exposure of over 786 million records.

Is Communication Safe?

We may think back to a time before online communication and believe that we were more secure when we only had access to landlines and mobile phones. To a certain extent this was probably true as there was far less data available to be exposed, however it wasn’t unheard of for telephone conversations to be listened in on or calls to be recorded. One such case which highlights this perfectly is the News of the World hacking scandal where journalists of the newspaper were accused of recording private calls and even accessing people’s voicemail accounts.

We have all long been aware of the dangers which lurk within email and many of us are now savvy when it comes to looking out for phishing attempts. However, with the advent of VoIP, which offers screen share, video conferencing, instant messaging and online chat, this has widened the opportunity for hackers to focus on us. VoIP is an online application and as such our IP addresses can be targeted to bombard us with spam; to access our personal data; to listen in on our calls; or to steal our bandwidth.

Even our social media accounts are not safe as hackers can use the information we provide there for several nefarious purposes. For example, they can steal our personal data; hack into our profiles and operate as us by sending communications to others; and in some cases burglars have even used social media to find out when people are on holiday and thentargeted their homes.

Can We Protect Ourselves?

However, while hacking is a big problem, there are ways to protect your data and in the process continue to enjoy all the benefits online communication can bring.

Anti-Virus Software: The first step to protect yourself is to install robust anti-virus software and ensure it is kept up to date. Scans should be set to run automatically so that any malware can be identified and quarantined before it has time to do any damage.

Password Protection: All applications, including your social media profiles, should be protected by lengthy passwords which comprise a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. These should also be changed regularly and not used across multiple sites, as if a hacker gains access to one, they will then be able to access all your data.

Encryption: This is another important element especially where it concerns data transferred by VoIP or stored in the cloud. If your data is encrypted then even if the security is breached the data held should remain private.

Be Aware: The final element is just to remain aware and to look out for any emails that may not be genuine. Never respond to an email requesting personal information and be wary of anyone you don’t recognise asking you to download an attachment.

When it comes to social media change your settings so that only certain people can access your personal information, for example your date of birth can be very helpful to anyone who wants to steal your identity, and be wary of who you receive friend requests from.

While landline telephone calls remain more secure than online communication they also don’t give us all the additional benefits that email, instant messaging and video calls can bring. Therefore, if you want to enjoy the advantages, you need to take the steps outlined above to keep you as secure as possible. The landscape is also one which is always advancing so stay alert to technology innovations and new ways to enhance your data security.

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Meet Google Alphabet – Google’s new parent company

CNN – Google announced a corporate restructuring on Monday, forming an umbrella company called alphabet and naming a new CEO to the core business of Google.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will run Alphabet — Page as CEO and Brin as president.

The company, which was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, announced its new operating structure in a blog post on Monday called “G is for Google.”

They also said that Sundar Pichai is taking over as CEO of Google.

Pichai has worked at Google since 2004, most recently as the senior vice president of product. Pichai has also been the most visible Google executive of late, giving the keynote at Google’s annual developers conference earlier this year.

Alphabet will operate as the parent company for a number of smaller companies, including Google, which will continue to focus on Internet products. Android, YouTube, search and ads will remain part of Google Inc.

Other departments spinning off into their own sub-companies including research focused Life Sciences (Google contact lenses), the Google X lab (driverless cars, Google Glass, drone delivery),Calico (increasing longevity), and the company’s robotics division. Google Ventures and Google Capital will also become independent Alphabet companies.

The Alphabet companies will retain their current leadership. Nest will be led by Tony Fadell, Sidewalk Labs by Dan Doctoroff, and Calico by Arthur Levinson. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki will now report to Pichai.

Brin will continue to head up Google X in addition to his role as president of Alphabet. Eric Schmidt will become Alphabet’s executive chairman.

“We are not intending for this to be a big consumer brand with related products — the whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands,” said Page in the announcement.

Page said the companies would all retain a great deal of independence and be run by strong CEO’s.

The new stand-alone companies will have more freedom to take risks. They can continue to invest in experimental projects like driverless cars without interference from other units at the company, or investors worrying about the company wasting too much time and energy.

Last quarter, Google posted $17.7 billion in sales, 90% of which was attributed to advertising it sold through search, partner websites, YouTube and Android.

Investors have rewarded the company for its financial success by sending the stock soaring 25% this year. Shares rose another 6% after Monday’s announcement. Google recorded $4.3 billion in profit last quarter, and it has $61 billion in cash.

Alphabet will continue to trade under the GOOGL (GOOGL, Tech30) and GOOG (GOOG) ticker symbols when the change kicks in later this year.

There’s already a new Alphabet website, abc.xyz, which includes a hidden link to the fictional Hooli.xyz website from the HBO comedy Silicon Valley.

Article by Heather Kelly for CNN

 

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