The MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal, Q2 2010

What Matt sent this AM:

“You’ve probably already seen the notice in your dashboards, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet:
http://wordpress.org/development/2010/06/thelonious/

3.0 is faster, stabler, and more secure, so you can focus on what matters (your audience) and let
the rest fade to the background.

Custom post types, MU merge, menu editor, Twenty Ten theme, over 1,200 bug fixes… there’s so much
to enjoy in this new release, we’re really proud of it. It’s the best WordPress yet, and available
for a limited time for only free ninety nine.

Tell your friends, help them upgrade, write new themes that use the new features, spread the good
word.”

Love,
Matt Mullenweg
http://ma.tt | http://wordpress.org

A sort of cool addon for WordPress blogs I am trying out today is Apture The website for the plugin is at http://www.apture.com/, have a look, I think you’ll like what is there.

CyStats is a feature-rich statistics plugin integrated in the WordPress admin area. Features are currently:

1. Bounce rate, ignore-by-cookie, ignore-by-ip/post-id/user_agent lists
2. hits, visits for day/week/month/year – human or robots
3. Top refering pages
4. Most read categories and tags
5. Most read, most commented posts
6. Most read feeds, number of feed visits today
7. Internal/external search words
8. Operating systems
9. Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics
10. 404 error requests
11. Browsers/clients/tools/…, w/o. version numbers
12. Template tags for most read posts, user count,…
13. Optional IP-anonymizing
14. Multi language support (currently english, german supported).
15. Optional tracking of admin area visits

I installed from the Plugins menu by searching for CyStats and installing same with a click of my mouse, and applied to the new blog for Route6Tour.com, that now has Happenings posts in their website via a WordPress blog. This stats program will help in that project. I will update this post after I’ve used this new tool some more.

Function Icon Set is a set of 128 glossy Icons Included some of the main Social Media Icons such as: Design Float, Digg, Delicious, Furl, Technorati, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Twitter and etc. They are only available in 48×48px. All of them are free, you can use them anywhere you like.

This is just plain ol’ ‘easy to do’ and a good way to polish your CSS use in pages too. From Lynette Chandler’s blog, via this one to you here’s the URL with her great solution
http://techbasedmarketing.com/blog/add-white-space-to-your-images-automatically if you don’t have time right now, bookmark this ‘keeper’ for when you do.

Today I attended a webinar that explains this image above, from Mike Volpe (VP of Marketing for HubSpot), time well spent and cause again to “Rethink the Marketing strategy” online.

As promised, here’s that link to the webinar recording and slides at hubspot.com http://www.hubspot.com/seo-may2008

A portion of some good spider information at http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm
–start paste–
Canonical issues: www vs. non-www There’s been much talk lately of canonical issues and search engines. This is where both the www and non-www versions of your pages are listed in a search engine. This is said to possibly trigger a duplicate content penalty and/or split page rank. If this is of concern to you, you may wish to use the following, but be aware that you may suffer a further loss of traffic while the engines sort out what’s what. This example is where you wish to direct all non-www traffic to www. Add the following to your .htaccess file.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Ensure that all your links to folders always end in a trailing / if there is no filename after that link.

FrontPage users: in addition to the above, you’ll also need to change the .htaccess files in: _vti_bin
_vti_bin /_vti_adm
_vti_bin/ _vti_aut Replace “Options None” to “Options +FollowSymLinks” Those folders are part of your FrontPage extensions on the server, so you’ll need to gain access via FTP. Note: test, test and test again after making changes. Test *immediately* after implementing 301 redirects. If you find anything wrong, remove the redirect immediately. User a server header checker to ensure that you’re getting a correct 301 response when using the old URL.

– end paste — Visit the page above for more information, to have all of the story.

Easy as cake, followed the instructions here http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress and all went as expected. That’s all there is to say, 2.3.2 version has been out over an hour at this writing.

8 Dynamic Marketing Tips
Copyright 2006 Bob Leduc
http://BobLeduc.com

Here are 8 dynamic marketing tips to help you increase your
sales and profits fast.

1. Don’t Just Sell Benefits

Don’t just tell prospects what they gain when they buy your
product or service. Tell them what they lose if they do not
buy it. Most people fear loss more than they desire gain.
Customers want your product or service to enjoy the benefits
it provides. They will want it even more when you remind
them of what they lose by not buying it.

2. Use Pleasant Surprises to Close Sales

An unpleasant surprise can kill a sale. But a pleasant
surprise can help close a sale. For example, adding an
unexpected bonus immediately before your prospect takes the
last action to complete a sale will eliminate any last
minute hesitation.

3. Provide Fast Delivery – Even When You Can’t

The faster you can deliver your product or service the more
sales you will get. If you cannot deliver all or part of
your product immediately, add something to the purchase that
you CAN deliver immediately. It could be as simple as a
series of helpful tips related to your product posted on
your web site …available only to new customers.

4. Make Buying Easier

Every non-essential action in the buying process is an
opportunity for customers to reverse their decision to buy.
Look for ways you can make your buying procedure easier and
faster. For example, many marketers use a multi-step
shopping cart to get online orders when a simple online
order form would do the job with just 1 or 2 quick clicks.

5. Improve Your Offers without Lowering Your Price

You don’t have to reduce your price to improve your offer.
Instead, simply load it up with bonuses. Make sure your
bonuses have a high perceived value to your customers
…even if they cost you little or nothing.

6. Keep Your Advertising Up to Date

If you never make any changes in your advertising, your
sales will eventually decline. Don’t abandon advertising
that’s working – but do keep trying to improve it. And
regularly test new advertising to see how it works for you.

7. Outsmart Your Competitors with Alternative Marketing

Look for some alternative marketing methods your competitors
are overlooking. That’s how one internet marketer discovered
direct mail postcards. They proved to be a highly effective
and very low-cost way to generate traffic to her web site
…while concealing her marketing activity from competitors.

8. Neutralize Customer Complaints Quickly

Handle customer complaints quickly and with a positive
attitude. Strive to preserve your relationship with the
customer instead of your immediate profit from them. They
will reward you with repeat sales and referrals instead of
punishing you by telling everybody they know about their
unhappy experience …causing you to lose future customers.

Each of these 8 marketing tips reveals a proven low-cost
marketing tactic many other small businesses have used to
boost their sales and profits. Integrate them into your
marketing program now and you’ll quickly start enjoying the
same results too.

Bob Leduc spent 20 years helping businesses like yours find
new customers and increase sales. He just released a New
Edition of his manual, How To Build Your Small Business Fast
With Simple Postcards …and launched *BizTips from Bob*, a
newsletter to help small businesses grow and prosper. You’ll
find his low-cost marketing methods at: http://BobLeduc.com
or call: 702-658-1707 After 10 AM Pacific Time/Las Vegas, NV