Archive for September, 2006

 RSS, short for “Real Simple Syndication”, is a technology that is actually been around for a little while, but has until recently hid from the mainstream. RSS is an XML-scripted programming language that “feeds” a webpage into a RSS reader, which is a desktop software program very similar to Microsoft Outlook or other email programs. The technology works very similar to the way email works, but with less fuss for both the reader and more importantly the writer.

 Weblogs, usually referred to as simply “blogs”, evolved into what we would refer to as a persons “voice” on the web. The word weblog, meaning “ a log or journal located on a web page”, pretty much sums up the definition of a blog. While a typical webpage contains information, it is often a static page that is only updated every now and then. A blog, on the other hand, is meant to be updated just like a journal, on a very consistent basis.

 Many consider the profession of journalism strictly limited to traditional media such as print (newspapers & magazines) and audio/video (radio & television). With the advent of the internet, every single person on the planet has been given the opportunity to be a journalist, to write articles and white papers on any subject they so desire to talk about.

 Social Networking, as a concept, has been around since the beginning of time. People gather and converse, meeting others that share similar ideas and interests. The first church was social networking. The first government. The first rock concert. On the internet, social networking, as it is often referred to, is rather new in the mainstream, but is changing how we as people gather and organize everything in our lives, from news to research to media and entertainment.

 Social Networking, as a concept, has been around since the beginning of time. People gather and converse, meeting others that share similar ideas and interests. The first church was social networking. The first government. The first rock concert. On the internet, social networking, as it is often referred to, is rather new in the mainstream, but is changing how we as people gather and organize everything in our lives, from news to research to media and entertainment.

Viral marketing is sometimes known as “word of mouth” marketing. Taking advantage of viral marketing on the internet can be a very cost-effective means to increase your company’s name and brand awareness.

 Most companies that want to advertise on the web have the option of doing so in a very traditional way. They purchase space on a website, usually as a banner ad, and pay the website owner a nice sum of money to put the ad on many pages. The price of the ad obviously relates to how many hits and visitors the website receives in a certain amount of time. Most websites charge the advertiser by per-thousand impressions, or “page views”. While this form of advertising does work, it can be costly. What other options does a small business owner on a budget have to advertise in a similar fashion?

 Perhaps one of the most widely used forms of online marketing, the email changed the way direct marketers did business after it was introduced in the mid 1990’s. Before the advent of email, direct marketers had to purchase lists of names and addresses, then pay a good amount of money to ship postcards or envelops to addresses. With email, postage is no longer required (although some major email providers are thinking about introducing certified email programs that charge small amounts for each email sent.)

Ever wonder how Google and Yahoo went from tiny search engines to huge media companies in just a few years? Most of their fortune lies in their pay-per-click (PPC) adverting programs, called Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions.

 Perhaps the most important element in search engine marketing, especially when trying to achieve high search engine rankings in Google, is the number of highly relevant, quality inbound links you have pointing to your website. To refresh, a link (or hyperlink) is what we click on to travel from one website to another. Much like a popularity contest, the number of websites that have links to your website will tell the search engines how popular, or relevant, you are to a particular keyword phrase. In addition, the quality of the website that links to you, and the actual word or phrase used in that link, are just some of the other factors involved in the search engine’s link algorithm.