Using Gmail for Internal Email

by Greg Pike, Applecore Web Developer

A Little Background
At our office we use one email for sending all of our server-generated emails. We have scripts that connect to the server and use that email for sending notifications, contact forms, and other website-related emails. In the past our scripts could send emails and mask who they were coming from by simply changing the value of the "From" field. For instance, if I went to a contact form and entered my email as johnsmith@example.com and click Send, the email received should appear from johnsmith@example.com rather than the generic email used by the server for sending mail.

For years, with our host, this was never a problem. We recently switched our email host to Gmail and, along with a few other technical hiccups from the switch, we had a problem with masking emails as from a specific sender.

Why is there even a problem sending these emails from Gmail?
Gmail blocks server-generated emails from masking who they’re from. Gmail forces the developer to authenticate themselves as whatever email they want to send from. That is, if you wanted your script to send an email as John Smith you would need his username and password to send it from the server. This isn’t usually ideal, but Gmail is trying to prevent servers from sending emails from someone without their consent.

Disclaimer
We managed to come up with an ad-hoc solution to the problem for any small organizations, like ours, that run intranets or scripts that send external emails from employees or members. It isn’t glamorous and it unfortunately doesn’t really work for anyone who isn’t a part of your network, but it’s a solution that met our needs. And since we couldn’t find any references to it online, we’re making our own contribution.

Our solution
Log into the Gmail account you intend to send emails from. This account should be the one your web scripts access. Click Settings and go to Accounts. Here, add the account of each member of your network. You can do this by clicking "Add another email address." As long as John Smith is associated with the server email (the one you logged in to), Gmail can send emails as if they’re from his account. This goes for all members of the network.

It might be wise to explain to your organization ahead of time that you need them to confirm their association with this Gmail account. When you add them as an additional account they’ll receive an email that tells them they need to verify that they wish for their account to be associated with your server account.

Good luck with it! 

Understanding Bounce Rates

by Greg Pike, Applecore Web Developer

Bounce rate. It's one of the top Google Analytics metrics and yet many people are still confused by it. What does it mean next to exit rates? What's the difference?

 A “bounce” is when a user has shown little interest in your website. In other words, when a user hits your website only to leave or ignore it immediately.

 The bounce rate is therefore the percentage of users who bounce. If four out of every ten users bounce, your bounce rate is 40%. This says four out of every ten users came to your site, didn't find what they were looking for, and left.

 Bounce rate: "I came. I puked. I left." - Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist and author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.

Average Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a performance measure for a website, particularly websites keen on converting users into customers like e-commerce websites. Most bounce rates will be somewhere between 35% and 60%. It's good practice to strive to reach the lowest possible bounce rate you can for a website.

Causes of High Bounce Rates

High bounce rates can be caused by a number of factors.

• Poor content. Users are nosy and want to learn more, but if your content isn't useful or not relevant they will not waste their time.
• Misplaced links, buttons, graphics or ads. Web users are very impatient and if they don't see what they want right away, they'll simply leave. Review how you're communicating to your users or redesign your website to draw them in. Google’s Website Optimizator will allow you to compare visitor metrics for multiple versions of the same page. Try creating several versions of a page to determine what will perform better.
• Abbreviated domain name. Many organizations share abbreviated names. For example, MWI is both the name of a search engine marketing company (mwi.com) and conflict mediation company (mwi.org).
• Start pages. Any user that has your website set as their start page will hit your website every time they open their web browser.
• Information pages. Users can be quick to jump around to find the information they desire. Information pages tend to have high bounce rates because users hit them to learn something specific, and when they acquire that knowledge they return to where they came from or move on.

There are some websites that will have high bounce rates and there's very little that can be done to change it. For the other websites that want to take action and lower their bounce rate, there isn't really one solitary solution. Every website has different content, different audiences and many other distinctive factors that make it unique-- which means improving bounce rate can only be taken on a case by case basis. That magic word or one-step process to give you a better bounce rate? It doesn't exist. 

Bounce Rate and Exit Rate

At first glance, it might be difficult to see a difference between bounce and exit rate. Exit rate is similar to bounce rate, but differs in that it calculates the percentage of users that "exit" the site from any particular page. For example, a user hits the default landing page and navigates to a news article. There is no bounce because the user stayed on the website. Then the user goes to google.com and searches for something. This is an exit. Exit rate is the percentage of users that leave the site from a given page divided by the total number of users that visit that same page.

 Let's break it down.

Ten users visit the Applecore Games page.

Two users hit this page from a search query and the other eight all get there from the site navigation (meaning they were already on the Applecore site before going to the games).

One of those two users (from the search engine) leaves the page and goes back to their search results and the other one clicks a link and plays one of the games.

Of the other eight, three users leave the website and go to eBay to buy books on the definition of Exit Rates.

The other five click on links and also play the games.

Bounce Rate: 1 / 10 - 10%
Exit Rate: 3 / 10 - 30%

 

Exit rate is not necessarily a bad thing. Users cannot stay on your website forever. It does, however, give you insight as to what pages leave your visitors feeling the need to move on.

Watching The Future of TV

by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist

The days of appointment TV are looking like a thing of the past.

In recent years, viewers have found themselves with more choice than ever when it comes to television, with even basic cable clocking in at nearly 75 channels. More specialty channels crop up every year, with interests so finely tuned that you have to wonder who exactly tunes in (are there really enough viewers to justify WealthTV?). But something else has changed about TV: it's not just what we watch, it's also become a choice of how we watch it. 

The writing on the wall came when Tivo first appeared on the horizon. It eclipsed the sometimes unreliable, unwieldy technology of VCR, replacing tapes with a hard drive and human forgetfulness with automatic recording (which meant that viewers would never miss an episode of their favorite shows). A pioneer in digital video recording, Tivo allowed viewers the freedom to watch their favorite shows whenever they had the time, instead of making the time.

That, it turns out, was the first wave.

Now, the internet has taken it one step further, bypassing the need for a subscription or even a special device. With the advent of YouTube, Hulu and other online resources, the only thing many viewers need to catch up on their favorite shows is a speedy internet connection. In just one year, the percentage of Americans watching some prime time TV on their computer screens instead of their TV sets went from 6% in 2007 to over 20% in 2008.

The effects of this shift aren’t hard to see. Saturday Night Live made history this year with Tina Fey’s infamous impersonation of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin; by the following Wednesday, NBC.com reported the skit had become their most-watched viral video ever, with 5.7 million views. 

So the times began a'changing. No longer would you need to rely on external sources—such as the daily newscast or commentary programs—to catch all the highlights of the day. Miss Obama’s inaugural speech? No problem; just catch it later on YouTube. With that, history has been broken down into democratic snippets, letting everyone catch up in their own time. With the explosion of these easily uploaded, accessible video clips, the viewer is allowed to create their own highlights. 

Other networks have figured out ways to profit from this shift. New episodes of CW favorite Gossip Girl are available for purchase on iTunes the next day for $1.99, and the show’s popularity has exploded as a result—but only online, as the broadcast version consistently under-performs. The explosive online success of Gossip Girl has been called a preview of TV 3.0, and the larger networks have gradually followed suit, as ABC made popular shows Lost and Desperate Housewives into downloads for iPods, as well as streaming select episodes for free on their website. Rival powerhouses NBC and CBS quickly did the same.

This hasn't proven a huge moneymaker yet (at least not compared to the usual revenue from advertising sponsors, TV stations and cable channels) but the networks seem determined to stay on board this potentially lucrative bandwagon. It's a wise move indeed, especially as the Information Generation (that is, those born from 1980-2000 who grew up using computers) become the overwhelming majority. This kind of instantaneous delivery system is poised to only increase. 

What might be the next step in television's horizon? Telling stories in a way that lets everyone play along. A Finnish network has developed Accidental Lovers, a new romantic drama. The twist? Its concept puts the viewer in a pivotal storytelling position, encouraging text messages to influence the outcome of the story:

On the screen, viewers will see their text messages and will hear the characters respond to their messages. A glowing heart will show whether their messages are warming or cooling the hearts of the romantic couple, and viewers will see the relationship develop according to their wishes. 

If the romance doesn't progress as viewers wish, they can try again later as four runs of the programme will be broadcast showing 12 different evolutions of the love affair. Each one will be different, with each reacting to the viewers' wishes. 

Such a concept could mean the revival of appointment television once and for all—and a whole new meaning to how we see interactive media. 

Google Does it Yet Again

by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist

Google has become such a mainstay that it would hard to remember a world without it. In fact, the day that we all knew Google wasn’t just the latest technological trend probably came sometime in July 2005---when “Google” entered the English language as a verb:

goo·gle • \gü-gəl\: to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.

 These days, Google is consistantly the leader of the pack when it comes to innovations. In late 2006, they bought the online video site YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stock. Come September 2008, Google launched Google Chrome, its own web browser.

Late last year, Google announced the introduction of Google Flu Trends, a service that will take the IP addresses of users searching for flu-related queries, compile them, and track the active areas of flu outbreaks weeks before the official data from the Center for Disease Control is released.

As of May 2008, Hitwise reports that Google is the most used search engine on the web accounting for 68.29% of all US searches, way ahead of the closest competition—Yahoo, for example, trails behind at 19.95%. But did you ever stop to think about the path Google took to become the household name that it is today?

Older search engines would only rank the importance of a site by how many times a search term appears on it—if you searched for “apple pie,” you’d be given pages based only on how often “apple pie” appeared on the site…not based on the overall quality level.

But Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two PhD. students out of Stanford University, had a bigger dream: to devise a ranking system that could accurately reflect the relevance and quality of a website.

And so, in January 1996, Google began as the research project of two students. The germ of their idea was a search engine that could create a more accurate ranking system by looking at the relationships between websites rather than just the web content alone. Revolutionary? We think so.

After much testing, the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 4, 1998 (making them Applecore’s slightly older brother). Their unofficial corporate motto? “Don’t be evil.”

            Google’s approach paved the way for Search Engine Optimization (or SEO). Search Engine Optimization is just what it sounds like—it’s enriching a website with the right tools (like keywords, links and content) to place it higher in the page rankings of Google and other search engines. Using SEO properly is two parts science, one part art, helping to achieve top rankings organically (at no cost). SEO has transformed into an incredible tool for attracting both the right kind and the greatest volume of traffic for a website.

It’s an exciting wait to see what other innovations Google will cook up next, because with every new invention comes inspiration from seeing people be their most creative, most insightful selves. 

The Motrin Moms Mobilize

by J. Butler, Content Development Specialist

Is there really no such thing as bad publicity?

A few weeks ago, the internet was buzzing with one tale of social media gone horribly awry. The story became notorious almost instantly: Motrin, manufacturer of painkillers, was at the center of the controversy, with a well-armed, plentiful group of consumers opposing them: mothers.

It began with a simple 30-second spot and a handful of print ads over the course of one weekend. Motrin, aiming for tongue-in-cheek clever, was sympathizing with the joys (and aches) of being a new mother: namely, the backache, muscle pain and headaches associated with carrying your child around in a sling instead of in a stroller or pram—often called ‘baby-wearing.’ While their message was sincere (“we feel your pain, let us help”), their approach proved too glib for so sensitive a topic: the message that emerged was “attachment parenting is trendy and tedious.”

As the video started circulating the internet, and almost as soon as blogging moms saw it, a powerful reaction began to brew. The ad, clearly intended as sly, harmless fun, was instead hitting a nerve. Calling baby-wearing a “supposedly” good bonding method, the ad implied that one of its chief benefits was making the wearer look like “an official mom.”

Many viewers thought it disrespectful to parents, and condescending to child-rearing. These outraged parents took to the streets of the information highway and protested loudly, on very public venues such as their blogs, Twitter, and YouTube. They began a thread on Twitter (#motrinmoms), collected the complaints and turned them into a YouTube video that had nearly 21,000 views within a handful of days. In other words, they got organized—and got themselves heard.

Motrin responded quickly by removing the offending video and issuing a formal apology on their website (see a play by play of the weekend’s activity here). The lesson here is clear: the instantaneous nature of social media means a new kind of responsibility for those who create content online. There’s never been a better time to speak up and harness such a powerful medium, because customers are now engaging in an active conversation about the products they use. Instead of using an apology to merely appease customers, mistakes can be used to spark a dialogue that could have endless potential in the future.

 

Source: Web Strategist

Mozilla CEO: Ties with Google 'complicated' since Chrome

December 21, 2008 (Computerworld) Mozilla Corp. has a "reasonable" relationship with longtime partner Google Inc., but it's gotten complicated since Google launched its own browser, according to Mozilla's chief executive.

"We have a fine and reasonable relationship," John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, said in an interview last week. "But I'd be lying if I said that things weren't more complicated than they used to be."

Responding to questions about Mozilla's take on the upswing in browser competition, Lilly also knocked another rival, Microsoft Corp., for dismissing attempts to boost browser performance as merely a "drag race."

"It's a pretty good time to be a browser user," said Lilly. "There are more smart people hacking on browsers than in a long time. But when I hear Dean [Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer] say JavaScript performance is for crazy guys to worry about, then that worries me."

[ Read Entire Article ]

100 top sites for the year ahead

The online world has changed dramatically even since we last drew up a list of 100 useful sites in December 2006. In the interim, there has been a revival of the browser wars - with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari making surprising inroads into the Windows monopoly, and offering a new vision of what browsing can be like.

Many of the sites listed here were not available when we did our last list; although longevity is a mark of pride online, it is difficult for companies set up in the 1990s to reinvent themselves quickly enough to take advantage of new technologies. Although of course rapid change brings casualties too: it's possible that with all the economic turbulence going on that some of the sites here won't be around in a year from now, or that their now free services will have become paid-for. That doesn't diminish their usefulness, though; it just underlines their determination to survive.

...

So here are our 100 revised best sites to see you through the next couple of years. They're organised roughly along those lines.

[ Read Entire Article ]

Stress Busting Help from Applecore Interactive

It's that time of the year again, when everyone seems to have a little more stress in their lives than usual. Well, we have a remedy for you! Check out the following ten very addictive and interactive online games, including several from Applecore Interactive:

1. Core Pong
   
2. Snapper De-Stresser
3. Drum Kit
4. Air Balls
   
5. Sand Pile
6. Make Simple Music
7. Bubble Wrap
   
8. Three Dimension Stress Release
9. Tom and Jerry
10. Brain Wave
    

Applecore Interactive Celebration

Highlights from the Applecore Interactive celebration - new brand launch, ISO 9001:2000 certification and 10 years in business!

Top 10 Most Overhyped Tech Products

Blogs gush about them. PR campaigns blow millions on them. News anchors announce their arrival like they’re members of state. And the rest of us suffer when they utterly fail to deliver. They’re overhyped tech products, and unfortunately, we’ve run across quite a few of them through the years. Here are a few of our favorites… or at least, the ones we most bitterly remember.

Segway Personal Transporter

SegwayBy the way its inventor Dean Kamen and folks like Steve Jobs (who seems to have a blessing for hyperbole) talked this thing up, you would have believed it was the solution to all the world’s problems. And some people did. But instead of defying gravity, producing limitless energy or any of the other things people had dreamed up for “IT,” the thing basically, well , moved. Like an electric wheelchair. But standing up. Guess we’ll have to wait a few years for Kamen’s fusion reactor.

Palm Foleo

Before the Asus Eee hit the states and shook up the market for ultra-portable, low-cost PCs, Palm was building up the same concept with its Foleo PC. In theory, it had a number of concrete features that push it to the front of the pack, including zero boot time, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a full QWERTY keyboard. We say in theory, because the Foleo went off radar during the summer it was supposed to debut, then finally slipped beneath the waves for good when Palm formally announced its death in September. Thanks for getting our hopes up.

[ Read Entire Article ]

10 Futuristic Concept Laptop Designs

Technology grows too fast and to keep ourselves synchronized with the modern trends, we must take into account every progress whether that may be of past or of the future.

Compiled below is a list of the most futuristic concept laptop designs, some of which have won achievement awards while the rest are just too cool to know about.

Take a look and let us know which one of these do you think will most likely embrace reality in coming times.

1. Canova Dual Screen Laptop



[ Read Entire Article ]

Applecore Interactive Demo Reel

A taste of some of the award winning work that Applecore Interactive has produced over the years.

The new Applecore Interactive!

The new Applecore Interactive homepage has launched!

Check out our Creativity, Strategy and Technology at www.applecore.ca

Juggling Instructions

1. Start with two balls, one in each hand. Throw a ball from one hand to the other in an arc type toss.

2. When the ball reaches its highest point throw the next ball in a similar arc such that their paths do not cross.

3. Continue juggling until you are comfortable. Then start with two balls in your strong hand and the last ball in the other hand. Using the same directions above throw one ball from your strong hand up in an arc. When the first ball reaches its peak, toss the ball from your other hand. When that ball reaches its peak toss the third ball. At this point you should have already caught the first ball. Continue in this pattern throwing the balls back and forth.

4. A tip: when you do start with three balls, don’t worry so much about catching the balls as focusing on throwing them at the right time in a nice arc.

Statistics that will blow your mind

Apple’s 2008 Fiscal Q4 was one of the best quarters in Apple’s history posting revenue of $7.9 billion and net profit of $1.14 billion. A total of 6,892,000 iPhones and 11,052,000 iPods were sold during the quarter…which is more iPhones than every previous quarter combined (6.1 million) and the most iPods ever sold in a non-holiday quarter.
www.technologyexpert.blogspot.com

August 26, 2008 Mark Zuckerberg founder and CEO of Facebook announced they had hit a huge milestone: 100,000,000 people around the world are now using Facebook. www.facebook.com

Blogs allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it. There are over 175,000 new blogs every day and bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day…or over 18 updates a second. www.technoratimedia.com

A web server survey for October 2008 indicates that there are 182,226,259 websites online, which reflects growth of 948,000 over September 2008. www.newsnetcraft.com

Q. How many emails are transmitted daily around the world?
A. About 1.2 billion are sent from non-spam sources. If you count the spam/phishing ones, it’s about 75% more…or 2.1 billion daily. www.wikianswers.com

It is estimated that YouTube consumed as much bandwidth last year as the entire Internet in 2000; and that over 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute. In March of this year, bandwidth costs were estimated at approximately $1 million a day. In April of this year, there were more than 83 million videos on YouTube. www.wikipedia.org

Can you juggle!?

???

1-800-GOOG-411

http://www.google.ca/goog411/

The First Interactive Election in History

With the flurry following the election results of the past week, it's no wonder that many industry insiders are pointing out the importance of social media in Barack Obama's campaign. These snapshots of social media stats, taken Nov. 3, 2008, show the figures behind each candidate's online standing:

Facebook

Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace

Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube

Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 Subscribers: 28,419, (uploads about 2 a day), Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter

Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

[Stats taken from the Web Strategy Blog by Jeremiah.]

Even just glancing at these statistics make it clear that Obama dominated the social media stratosphere. And given that the 2008 election had a record turnout, with media coverage that looked more like the Oscar pre-show, it seems clear that using this kind of platform grants access to a wide, diverse group of individuals who are ready and willing to listen.

There's a lesson about the future of interactive marketing in all this. The success of the Obama campaign, and its seamless integration of social media with other, more traditional campaign tactics, serve as a excellent reminder of the growing importance of social media, and how many companies must learn to embrace these new trends if they want to get their message heard, like Obama...or be left behind surrounded by unheard, mixed messages like McCain.

It’s a celebration!

Applecore Interactive has successfully passed the QMI external audit and has been officially recommended for ISO 9001:2000 certification!

We are the first company of our kind in Newfoundland & Labrador to receive this designation, and join a very elite list of web design companies across Canada and North America with the ISO 9001:2000 certification.

---

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) - http://www.iso.org/
ISO 9001:2000 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000
QMI – SAI Global - http://www.qmi.com/registration/iso9001/

Ocean View Hotel

Located ideally inside Gros Morne National Park, the Ocean View Hotel (http://www.theoceanview.ca/) was in the process of reinventing itself as the premier accommodations of Rocky Harbour, NL, making the change from motel to hotel and incorporating a complete re branding. With its prime location and excellent record of service, the hotel needed a website re-design that would better reflect their fresh new image. The upgrade involved an elegant, more professional interface, a content overhaul and the development of an online booking system that would ease their guest’s ability to plan their stay.

You can check out the finished product here.

Using Annotations in YouTube Media

YouTube has long been a major centre of social media for organizations.

This year they unveiled Annotations, an interactive way for users to be engaged throughout their videos. Any videos uploaded by an organization contain the ability to display speech bubbles, notes, tags, or links to other YouTube videos as per that organization’s wishes. These Annotations can be dynamically placed anywhere on the viewing area of the movie for any desired duration. This presents a greater ability to inform or reach viewers.

More than just the added benefit of informing viewers, this new service provides the ability for users to completely interact with the video they are watching. For example:


In this video, the viewer is actually able to play the game and select an outcome.

Possibly one of the best features of this added service to YouTube is its ease of control. To edit Annotations go to the Edit video page or My Videos page as shown below and click “Annotations” under the listed video.



This will bring you to a page with four Annotations options, (Speech Bubble, Note, Spotlight, and Pause Annotation), a panel for editing your Annotations, and a preview video.



The owner of the video is able to drag Annotations around on their video, change the duration of the Annotations, and even insert links from that Annotation to a relevant YouTube video, like with the Shell Game video above.

Types of Annotations

Speech Bubble – This should be pretty self-explanatory. It is a speech bubble you can place in a video to make figures in that video look like they are saying something to the audience.

Note – This is for describing the video or providing a tidbit of information relevant to the video.

Spotlight – This works similar to tagging systems in photo galleries. The owner of a video can put a highlightable box over any figures in the video and when the viewer hovers over that box they see who or what is in that frame.

Pause Annotation – This will pause the video for any duration of your choice. A pause timer will appear on the video to allow the viewer to gauge how long the video will be paused for. This can be done to provide time for the viewer to read text or select a link.

Online Video Market Evolves, Begins Morphing Into New 'Storytelling' Device

YouTube and related technologies alerted the marketing world to a powerful new tool that speaks to the heart of what marketing has always been about: the art of conversation between brand and client. Applecore has always operated from the philosophy that in order to mobilize audiences or change behaviour, as a marketer it has to target hearts and minds – cognitive and emotive – simultaneously. Online video has provided us with one of the most effective methods of achieving this.

In a world of keyword clouds and content searches video has been standing in the back row, depending on clever content creators to direct traffic to the magical movie. Video tagging and content-rich descriptions are the beginning of overcoming this minor hurdle. In short, video is changing, video makes for powerful conversation and online video is growing.

At the recent OMMA Video conference in Los Angeles, the following article was released:

A year or so after the online video advertising marketplace emerged in earnest, experts on both sides of the table say it remains a vital but messy, complicated and often difficult-to-evaluate business--although it clearly is the future of what Madison Avenue has historically considered its dominant, persuasive advertising medium: television. Those were the conclusions of speakers and panelists participating in the OMMA Video conference here on Wednesday...

[ Read Entire Article ]

Economic Uncertainty? Grow Out Of It!

Depressed along with the markets? Don’t be—it’s time to grow out of this crisis and into your next opportunity.

At a recent conference in Seoul, Sir Richard Branson said, “There are enormous opportunities when there is a crisis. In a situation like this, it’s absolutely essential to conserve cash. I think companies that do have cash owe it to their country and the people in the company to actually invest that cash in order to grow out of the crisis.”

Obviously our entrepreneurial solutions of the past 8 years got us to this point, so why wouldn’t the same tricks turn things around? The cowardly response is to cut: cut staff, cut training, cut marketing or anything else that would allow only the bare bones of an operation to continue.

The creative mind looks for opportunity.

Internet marketing offers a creative way to thrive in a crisis. Search engine marketing allows you to say exactly what you want to say to whom you would like. You reach a highly motivated person looking for your solution. and can additionally measure every result and change mid-stream if it fails to show results. If they don’t play, you don’t pay.

Invest in your website’s content management system (CMS) : By creating a CMS you take control of your content. No delay at the marketing department, the designer, the printer or publisher. You say what you need to say immediately. The cost? Only your time.

Online video has become the tool of the masses. Created with any variety of technology—a cell phone, a pocket camera or, if you like, a high definition camcorder with studio lights— and edited on the fly. Continue the brand conversation with your audience in the social web-o-sphere – on your website, YouTube, Facebook, Google Video. The opportunities are endless.

If you're worried about rivals poaching your clientele, you have an advantage: you already know your customer. Continue the conversation online through e-marketing. You control this distribution channel and the cost is minimal. All these online marketing endeavours are measurable, they are flexible, lean and nimble.

Still asking ‘why?’ Maybe you should try asking ‘Why not?’

In tough economic times, you’ll see some of your competition disappear. That’s only natural: in Branson’s words, the best always survive in a crisis. It is time to find the ‘E’ in creative, and outlast them all.

Using Social Media to Reach People Who Don't Use Social Media

1. Develop Relationships with People Who Bridge The Gap Inside Other Organizations

You may want to target senior executives, older people or others who just aren't very likely to read your blog posts, Twitter messages, etc. but chances are - those people have co-workers, family and others in their lives who would.

2. Use Web 2.0 Tools to Learn About Real Life Public Events

There may or may not be relevant events in your field that are attended by non-social media users and are listed on sites like Upcoming.org and Eventful.com. It's worth a look and worth subscribing to the RSS feeds for those searches.

3. Make Your Blog an Email Newsletter and Promote it Elsewhere

If your target audience doesn't read blogs or participate in social networks, they probably do like email. This is an easy thing to do and can prove quite effective for non-technical audiences if framed in a non-threatening way.

4. Look Harder, Your Audience Probably is Using Social Media That You Aren't Aware Of

There were 5 billion videos watched on YouTube just by people in the US in July. There are people in your industry using LInkedIn, we guarantee it. Where are people talking about you or your industry online?

5. Use the Internet to Make Yourself Smarter In Real Life

The best way to use social media to reach people who don't use social media is probably just to use social media to kick more ass. You may be the only person in a meeting that reads blogs (unlikely, really) but that doesn't have to be what people notice; the fact that you know more, sooner, about your shared interests (as a result of reading blogs) well will be a big help.

[ Read Entire Article ]

How tough times will boost online marketing

Kelsey Group, a search and directory research firm, is predicting a boom in online marketing by home- and trade-services businesses. Today, just 33% of these businesses have Web sites, but Kelsey says that will nearly double by 2010. "Web sites will be viewed as a cost-effective alternative; a channel that didn't make sense in a booming market will fast become a necessity," the firm said in a news release. It suggests home-services businesses pay attention to consumer referral and community sites like Angie's List and ServiceMagic.

[ Read Entire Article ]