bobology

Constant Contact Gets Social: New Social Networking Tools At Last!

In a preview of features coming soon, Constant Contact announced they are adding the following features for emails sent from a user account:

• post the email to Twitter
• share the email on Facebook
• post the email to other social networks
• use a Facebook Like button in emails

Since Constant Contact creates a Web page for the email, the links in these posts direct the user to the HTML copy of the email hosted by Constant Contact. This is included with every email automatically and is a standard part of their service.

Constant Contact Events will be integrated with social networking. Event features include:

• sharing the event announcement on Facebook
• attendee sharing on Facebook
• attendee sharing on Twitter

I was just telling students in last nights class at Los Angeles Valley College that Constant Contact was behind other email list management tools when it came to integrating their solution with Facebook and Twitter. I can hardly wait.

I am a Constant Contact partner but also use and have used Vertical Response and Mail Chimp for email subscriptions.

Beginner's Guide to Internet Safety now available on Scribd

A Beginner's Guide to Internet Safety

Social Marketing ROI: Domino's Pizza UK Credits Growth to Social Marketing

In the UK journal  Marketing, by John Reynolds Domino's UK operations reported some interesting numbers:

• e commerce growth was over 61%
• online sales accounted for over 32% of total sales
• a national UK initiative was launched using Foursquare

While lower cost food brands are generally trending upward globally, competition for food dollars is fierce. I expect to see US brand initiatives using Foursquare soon. The choice of Foursquare by Domino's may signal that the race is over for leadership in location based check-in solutions.

Bob's Definition of Social Networking (edited by his wife too)!

After 20 or so classes teaching people Social Media and Social Networking I came up with my own definition. In addition, it has the added benefit of being edited by my wife, who is determined not to use any of this stuff but is a retired professional editor.

This has worked pretty well for me to use for people just getting their feet wet and doesn't use any specific Web site (Facebook, Twitter, etc) technology, or media. I was trying very hard to avoid that since pace of change is just phenomenal in this area.

Social Networking: Bob’s Definition

Social Networking Web sites utilize one or more forms of communication that have been developed for the Internet, and combine these forms of communication in ways that allow us to use a variety of contents, in order to share information with other people and enhance our relationships.

SEO Guarantees for Local Business Ranking on Search Engines

A good question came up in my class on Internet marketing at Riverside Community College that a lot of business owners probably have. A plumber who was in the class told me he had paid a search engine optimization (SEO) expert who had guaranteed that he would be in the top 5 results for search. He said he never saw a listing for his company ever show up and wanted to know if he could trust anyone that does SEO.

I checked with one of my local experts, Dan Arteriano, who works at LimboVision, an SEO company in Southern California and a member of my business networking group, BNI. I asked Dan if any SEO company could guarantee results and he confirmed that I was correct, it's not possible to make any guarantees.