John Lennon, Woman
Leo Sayer, When I Need You
Air SUpply, The One That you Love
Beegees, How Deep is your Love
Bryant Adams, Everything I Do
Michael Bolton, Tell Me How am i supposed to Live without you
Pretenders, I will Stand By you
Barbara Streisand and Bryand Adams, I finally found Someone
Bonnie Tyler, Total Eclipse of Heart
and More..
Definately the Best Ballard Collection ever….
We may already be a week into 2010, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to starting making resolutions.
Resolve to give your online marketing efforts a boost this year by recognizing areas for improvement and putting in place a plan to make positive changes.
To help you get started, TopRank Online Marketing has come up with New Year’s resolutions for 5 different online marketing channels: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Pay-Per-Click and Mobile Marketing.
I resolve to focus more on maximizing visits and conversions from organic searches.
With SEO efforts, it’s easy to get caught up in one goal: getting found via the search engines. But ranking in the search results is only half the story. If potential customers aren’t clicking through to your web page – or other piece of digital content – the ranking doesn’t mean much. Plus, due to variances in what each of us sees in the search results for the same query, rankings as metric are no longer as useful. Personalized search results according to location and web history means your site might rank high for one person, but not another.
Maximize the success of your online marketing efforts by analyzing your metrics report to determine which pieces of digital content are highly visible but producing less than ideal traffic results. Then take some time to ask yourself these questions:
Not only will searchers respond more favorably to customer optimized titles and meta descriptions, but the increase in clickthroughs will, no doubt, be noticed by search engines and may influence subsequent rankings.
I resolve to set goals and track the results of my social media efforts.
There’s no denying that social media is more difficult to justify in terms of ROI compared to other online marketing strategies. But that’s not to say it’s impossible – or that tracking results should be placed on the back burner. And without goals, it’s pretty difficult to measure success. In 2010, put forth even more effort to set goals for social media participation and tie results back to specific tactics.
There are a host of free or near-free tools available to gauge brand mentions and traffic from social media channels. In December, we highlighted 5 of these social media monitoring tools.
Tracking results via social media monitoring tools is just a start. Those results must be tied back to business goals. Potential goals might be:
Without setting specific goals upfront, social media efforts can’t be definitively quantified so be sure to implement a Social Media Roadmap and all or social bases will be covered.
I resolve to integrate my email marketing with other online marketing channels.
Regardless of what the naysayers may say, email marketing isn’t going to disappear as a result of social media in 2010. In fact, email will continue to play a significant role in most online marketing mixes this year. A study from Silverpop found nearly half of marketers surveyed plan to increase email marketing budgets in 2010.
That’s not to say email marketing efforts shouldn’t evolve with the times. Integrating email with social media is on par to be a popular resolution for 2010: A recent eMarketer report found 40% of executives surveyed will make integrating the two tactics their top marketing initiative this year. Another 25% of respondents have already implemented an integrated strategy.
Pledge to take email marketing to the next level by encouraging email subscribers to not only forward content via email, but also to get social with email and share it via Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other sites. Conversely, conduct a poll on Twitter or your blog, and encourage followers and readers to subscribe to your e-newsletter for the results.
I resolve to maximize conversion rates by testing different versions of my ads and landing pages.
Most companies using self-serve pay per click programs fall victim to “set it and forget it” habits. They’re busy with numerous other marketing activities or don’t have the time to really get to know the native bid management platforms and test/refine campaigns. Even if PPC efforts are reaching set goals in terms of conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. You’ll never know until you try.
Consider these three ideas for testing different elements of your PPC campaigns:
A few tools for testing include:
I resolve to rethink my website design for mobile users.
If your site isn’t already optimized for handheld devices such as cell phones, now is the perfect time to re-assess your site design and how users find your site through mobile search – particularly for B2C companies.
In October, ABI Research forecast that mobile sales of physical goods in North America would reach $750 million by the end of 2009, a 117% annual growth rate. Consumers are doing a lot more than purchasing downloadable cell phone ringtones and games from their mobile devices. These days, clothing, electronics, books and a host of other items are being purchased through mobile commerce. Additionally, social network participation through services like foursquare, Facebook and Twitter are growing dramatically, creating additional opportunities for promotion and traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.
When optimizing web pages for the mobile web, consider a few tips:
Online Marketing Efforts in 2010
As you make your own personal New Year’s resolutions to drop a few pounds, start a savings account or join a gym, don’t forget your online marketing efforts. Each year provides a fresh start and endless possibilities, so take advantage.
What resolutions do you plan to make in 2010 to improve your online marketing efforts?
We Americans love our cars, (or at least that’s what they’ve been telling us all these years) but this last year showed a remarkable drop in car ownership – down by 4,000,000 vehicles! Some may blame it on the recession, but analysts are linking the decline to other factors like increased urbanization, gas prices, traffic and congestion, automobile saturation and even concerns regarding climate change. This is welcome news to us and we hope this trend continues, with more people relying on public transportation, car sharing, bikes, and their own two feet.
by Ariel Schwartz, 01/07/10
As a general rule, cell phone batteries are costly, resource-intensive, and difficult to dispose of properly. So why not ditch them and run our cell phones on soda? That’s the thinking behind designer Daizi Zheng’s concept phone for Nokia. Instead of running on traditional batteries, the concept phone uses a bio battery that generates electricity from carbohydrates.
Fuel cells powered by sugar are nothing new — they’ve been in use for years — but Zheng’s point seems to be that we shouldn’t overlook innovative uses for the products we consume everyday. And of course, maybe Coke does belong in a battery more than it belongs in our bodies. It doesn’t hurt that the bio battery can operate for three to four times longer than a lithium-ion battery on a single charge, either.
We jut have one question: what about all the energy used to produce Coke? In the end, it probably makes more sense to use plain sugar water as a fuel source — unless it’s your New Year’s resolution to give up on your stockpile of soda.
Dezeen via Treehugger
TechCrunch is a group-edited blog that profiles the companies, products and events defining and transforming the new web.
Gizmodo, the gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural.
everything from media to new tech products.
Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture.
Web Technology news, reviews and analysis
Gadgets, gear and computer hardware.
Business, Innovation, Technology, Society
Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com
Trusted Insights and Conversations on the Next Wave of Technology
Your daily antidote to gadget marketing hype.
Feeding Your Gadget and Tech Obsessions
MAKE is a quarterly publication from O’Reilly for those who just can’t stop tinkering, disassembling, re-creating, and inventing cool new uses for the technology in our lives. It’s the first do-it-yourself magazine dedicated to the incorrigible and chronically incurable technology enthusiast in all of us. MAKE celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend technology any way you want.
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com
by Peter Kafka
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com
News and views from the Google Mobile team.
The Nexus One marketing blitz continues. The first official “Google phone” is now being prominently featured on the search giant’s famously spartan homepage. This is the kind of advertising that money can’t buy, because it simply isn’t for sale. And because Google almost never features ads on the page, you can be sure it’s going to be catching quite a few eyeballs. Last time an ad popped up here John Gruber called it “the most valuable ad space on the entire Internet”.
Yes, Google has done this before for previous Android launches (the Droid and the G1), so this wasn’t totally unexpected. But it’s clearly not the kind of move Google takes lightly. It’s also the first time Google has featured an ad on its homepage since it rolled out its even-more-minimalist fading homepage. You’ll notice that the Nexus One ad is one of the few elements of the page that appears on load, before everything else fades in.
One of our resolutions for the New Year is to get our apartment back in pre-baby shape in terms of organization. Certain areas have fallen by the wayside since our son was born and we’re going to tackle them one by one. The first might be our landing strip which is overwhelmed by piles of mail – ingoing, outgoing, to be recycled? We’re not really sure.
Coming across this tutorial for a quick-sew mail sorter by Gina of Bright and Blithe couldn’t have happened at a better time. It’s a basic shape making this a good project for beginner sewers too. She printed out her mail categories onto card stock and then stitched that onto the fabric panels, but if you’re so inclined you could get fancy and embroider them.
You can find Gina’s mail sorter tutorial at her blog Bright and Blithe (see some of her other nifty tutorials here).
(via Craft Gossip, photo credit: Bright and Blithe)
