Facebook Advertising: An interesting tag line for social networking sites

Facebook's smart tag line to snatch advertising dollars from search advertising giant. The graphic reads: Facebook Advertising: Reach your customers before they start searching.

OS X Free Screen Shot Software - Screenshot Plus

After having spent money on several screen shot software, I finally found one that really satisfies my needs. This screen shot software for Mac OS X is called Screenshot Plus and best of all it's free.

Downloading and installing is quick and painless. One installed, Screenshot Plus runs as a widget and offers a variety of controls including time delayed screen shots.

The default file format for saving screen shots is PNG, however you can easily change it to be tiff, jpg, pdf or gif.

So happy that I don't need to pay for a quality software for my new and shiny Mac Book Pro.

How to run successful online video contests

Video contests generally are most effective for websites with a very specific demographic. According to a Marketing Sherpa report, "the tighter your niche, the younger and more Web savvy your demographic, the more sense it makes" to run an online video contest.

Why use online video contests?
- To benefit from the power of user generated content
- To break barriers associated with traditional video contests
- To better connect with your younger audience
- To keep costs under control

When running video contests
- ask yourself if you really need to run a video contest as contests based on other media can be less expensive
- utilize the power of social networking sites to get the message out there.
- advertise the contest on all important pages of your website, including your home page.
- use newsletters to announce contest
- advertise contests on sites that cater to the same niche
- think of contest page as a landing page -- optimize for conversion
- reward all submissions with at least something to avoid negative press by users who didn't win

Choosing a partner destination site to run your contest

By utilizing the power of established video focused destination sites such as YouTube, you can significantly increase participation rates. Also by using the social networking features of such popular destinations, viral marketing becomes much easier for contest participants.


Companies like Votigo now allow marketers to create co-branded or white label video contests complete with comments, rating rules and social networking features.

Case study: Online video contest by Nestle for Nesquik brand



Nesquik online video contest on YouTube with a grand prize of $10,000.


On its home page, Nesquik featured its "happy place" video contest very prominently.


Nestle using the power of search advertising to advertising its Nesquik online video contest.

Online Display Advertising ROI Effectiveness

According to this chart published by Marketing Sherpa, Online display advertising gets the best ROI.

"The key takeaway for advertisers is that the context in which an ad is served is at least as important as the ad itself. It’s no different than traditional direct marketing; the list is the most important variable in a successful campaign.

An impression is wasted if the consumer is not in the proper state of mind, or simply does not fall into the group of people who would have reason to consider the offer. From an ROI perspective, eliminating wasted impressions, then making a good impression by serving up great advertising, is consistently the best option for advertisers."

eBay sues Craigslist

Even though eBay is a minority shareholder (28.4% ownership) in Craigslist, the auction giant has decided to sue the free classifieds site. The court case is sealed but what we know according to BBC is that the case is based on actions taken by Craigslist that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%"

eBay also has its own classifieds site with a ridiculous name, Kijiji. Is eBay wanting to simply threaten Craigslist or is it a hint at hostile takeover?

Source: eBay sues Craigslist

Alexa ranking algorithm changed

Last week Alexa changed their ranking algorithm causing the ranking of many sites to be shifted. Currently only 9 months of data is available for all charts using the new ranking algorithm, however Alexa's announcement claims that will change soon.

Since 1998 Alexa was ranking sites based on data gathered by their toolbar. A decade later, Alexa has decided to aggregate data from multiple sources, not just their toolbar. Unfortunately the company is silent on who exactly the additional sources are.

Verizon forcefully putting links in messages

Verizon Wireless has started doing something that I consider really unethical.

It seems they are implementing black hat SEO techniques to increase their site's visibility in search engines.

I have been using blogger's mobile blogging feature using Verizon Wireless. Recently when I tried to blog about Korean Barbeque using my phone, I was shocked to find out that Verizon had forcefully injected the following crap into my message. Worse, they didn't even make the links "nofollow."

Having all this blob of crap is only going to get your blog penalized by search engines as all those media posts will be considered duplicate content.

A quick Google search reveals that Verizon Wireless's nasty act is already on hundreds of sites.

What Verizon doesn't realize is that this will be considered spam by search engines as the same text and link will appear on all user sites that use Verizon Wireless for mobile blogging.

I guess I am going to stop blogging using my Verizon phone.

Shame on you Verizon!

The spam message forcefully injected in the posts follows:
This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!<br /><br />To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit <a href="http://www.verizonwireless.com/picture">www.verizonwireless.com/picture</a>.<br /><br />To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime® 6.5 or higher is required. Visit <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download">www.apple.com/quicktime/download</a> to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime® Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

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