Category: News & Trends

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Vote for the Blog Writer You Like Best in Our Readers Choice Award

Join Our Readers Choice Award Contest

We’ve created a contest for our staff blog writers where you, our reader, make the choice on which writer or blog post you like best. The writer with the most Google+ +1 votes on their unique blog post entry page will win a nice cash award just in time for Christmas.

It’s easy to participate, here’s what to do:

  • Read each five blog posts that our staff writers have submitted for the contest from our pool of clients and then click the Google +1 icon on the page to place your vote.
  • Or choose to simply vote for the writer you like and know by clicking the Google +1 icon on their blog post page.

You will need to be logged in to your Google account in order to vote and have Google+ enabled in your browser. You’ll only be allowed to vote once. Once you vote the Google+ icon will show your name and open a field for you to share with others on Google+. If you click the +1 button again, you will remove your vote.

Voting will run from November 27th to December 11th. On December 12th we will award the cash prize to the top writer selected by Google +1 votes.

Here are some quick blog post lead ins to read. Just click the link at the bottom of the teaser to visit the blog post page and vote.

Jada

Tips for Saving  Money on Your Summer Vacation While  some people plan and book their summer vacations way in advance, if you haven’t  even begun to make plans, don’t worry. If you are flexible you may be able to  snag last minute deals. And you can take the LorMet Visa Travel Card with you so that you have the security of Traveler’s Checks and the convenience  of a Visa Debit Card. You can check your LorMet Visa Travel Card balance online  and take advantage of Online Banking to check on your LorMet accounts when you travel. Read the full blog post and vote now!

Jeff

The Best Worker is Usually the Most Comfortable One The call for more rain than last year in the fall has certainly been proven correct, especially for the East Coast. The weather gurus have also warned about more snowfall to be expected so the time to prepare is now.  It is a must to have the best clothing available when the weather turns bad as wet jeans just don’t cut it when the snow starts falling. Read the full blog post and vote now!

John

Traveling by Private Jet During Peak Seasons Whether you are flying in your own private jet or chartering an airplane, it can be difficult to travel during peak seasons. However, there are a number of things that you can do to ensure that your trip will be smooth and hassle-free. To get the flight or landing slot you want, you should make reservations at least a month or two before your trip. If you are traveling to a popular destination, you may have to book a few months in advance. Read the full blog post and vote now!

Rhonda

Blinging Up Technology Accessories What do you give a person who has everything this holiday season?  You can   forget about buying perfume or picking up a boring gift card this year.  For   those with money to burn, Apple has a great gift idea.  Along with their release   of the much anticipated iPad Mini, which hit stores on November 2, 2012, was an   interesting iPad Mini case that is not for the faint of heart.  You could choose   to purchase the cheap leather case for around $50 or you could indulge in a case   that is simply out of this world! Read the full blog post and vote now!

Sue

Space Center Offers  Exciting Insider’s View of Space Program Less than an hour from Epcot’s World of Tomorrow and Disney  World’s Fantasyland lays a place where dreams really do come true. The Kennedy  Space Center in Titusville, Florida is where rockets launched man into space  and is a must see if you are planning an Orlando vacation.  The space center is where Neil Armstrong took his last step on Earth before  leaving his legendary footprints on the moon. From this famous spit of land on  north Florida’s Atlantic Coast, every fire-belching Atlas rocket, Apollo  mission and shuttle flight was launched into the unknown as Americans pushed the  boundaries of exploration beyond Earth’s boundary. Read the full blog post and vote now!

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Facebook Cleans Up Fake Users and Likes From Accounts

Did you know that September 27th Facebook started to purge its system and your account of fake likes and bogus users?

In fact this is what Facebook Security had posted on its wall:

“These newly improved automated efforts will remove those likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk likes.”

That means if you bought followers – actually I know some business clients who were actually thinking of doing this at one time, when a like actually meant something. So far our Spokesdog Facebook page is still there, but Facebook may clean that up too in the not too distant future.

Facebook states that this clean up effort is to improve things for personal accounts and brands, and it does make sense. With the ability of people who friend you to have access to your wall for their business or spam, it is a good idea for Facebook to clean up its act.

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Tidbits on Creating Your Google Shopping Data Feed

I’ve recently been at a seminar for Google Shopping and wanted to share some great tidbits that I have gleaned from the seminar.

First it is important to know that the pictures of products that can appear in the organic search results on Google.com are driven by a data feed you create and install in the Google Merchant Center. Previously this service was free, but by October 1, 2012 only only those data feeds that are tied to Google AdWords will be shown.

  1. You create and install your data feed as an .xml or .csv file in the Google Merchant Center to get started.
  2. The settings area in the Google Merchant Center is where you will link your Google AdWords account. Once you have set up an account, you very simply just input your AdWords 10 digit account number to link your feed to AdWords for payment.
  3. The most typical errors are image URL errors. Make sure that you have a link to a 400 pixel by 400 pixel image and a 250 by 250 pixel image in your data feed.
  4. You MUST list either the GTIN or MPN for your feed to go live.
  5. Know that your description in your data feed will be used for your ad text. So make it descriptive yet selling.
  6. Your title for each product can have a maximum of 69 characters. Your description can have a maximum of 500 to 1,000 characters. Remember this includes spaces.
  7. Do not put promotional verbiage in your product description like free shipping. You will be adding promotional text in Google AdWords for your specific feed’s promotional message.
  8. Do not use all capitals in any words such as THIS as AdWords does not allow block capitals.
  9. Make sure to add the new AdWords attributes to your feed to allow more targeting of your promotional needs now that your program must be tied to AdWords.
  10. Carefully review the required Google category attributes as there are as many as 32 or so that are required now.

Check back Wednesday for more great tidbits. You can watch the full seminar on YouTube for additional information.

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Are You Focused On Building Your Mobile Empire?

Everything I have been reading lately is really pushing the growth trend of mobile and I have to say I think that the growth and opportunities for doing business and connecting with others via mobile phones and tablets is a sector to really watch. I think that for pay per click programs there are some real growth opportunities for advertisers to move into mobile before the cost per click goes up to the level of desktops. I think that more casual surfing will be done with tablets, but I don’t think that laptops will ever go away – at least not yet.

As for me, I love being untethered to my desk, with full email access on my smartphone. Not only do I do email, but I use my smartphone for a mobile hotspot to power my tablet and laptop. I use my smartphone’s navigation tools and do review deals and discounts to decide if I will visit a new store for the first time. I consider having the information at my fingertips wildly freeing. But my usage only reflects about 40% of the US market at this time. That means there is about 60% more of the population who will, in the near future, be using new smartphones to connect the way I am now. That means astronomical growth and market positioning for those businesses who embrace this new way to connect with customers or at least to give additional options to connect now.

For many the first step into the mobile market it to advertise there, and that’s a great start. AdWords allows you to target smartphones with full Internet browsers and tablets separately from desktops. What I’ve found is that for high cost keywords the mobile and tablet click prices are cheaper, they do have less impression activity, but they do still generate conversions.

Think about what you should be doing in regards to positioning your own business to take advantage of this new trend in mobile and you may just find yourself riding a new crest of traffic and sales that takes your business to the next level.