The Week in Review

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7 Email Marketing Fails and How to Avoid Them

Email marketing is a great tool for reaching out to potential clients and nurturing leads, but it can backfire. Among the seven email marketing fails are not knowing the language, not including an unsubscribe link and forgetting the call to action. (Portent)

24 Small-Business Email Marketing Applications

Here are 24 newer email marketing applications for small businesses to consider. Among them are Feedblitz, CakeMail, CoolerEmail, Boomerang for Gmail and Nourish are among them. (Small Business Trends)

Email With Discounts Are Shared Most Often

According to a study from Emailvision, 34.7 percent of email marketers said emails with promotions or discounts received the most shares in the fourth quarter of 2011, followed by 20.8 percent who said the same for emails with humorous content. The primary objective of social media marketing for email marketers was to build brand awareness or reputation. (eMarketer)

Using Image Search Ads in Google

Google image search ads are ads that include text and inline images. They only appear on Google images search results pages. Here’s a rundown of how to get started with these ads. (PPC Hero)

Bing’s Linked Pages Is What Google+ Should Have Been

Bing’s Linked Pages allow Bing users in the U.S. only (for now) to connect websites and profiles to their Bing identities via Facebook authentication. The new Bing product does exactly what Google+ is for. The difference is that Google+ isn’t being pitched that way. (ReadWriteWeb)

The Failure of Google+

Google+ is getting a lot of good press lately, but it’s not an accurate reflection of what the social network is. “When Google started out, their goal was to build a great search engine. They did, and it changed everything. Nowadays when Google sets out to build something, they don’t do it to build the best product in its class; they do it to extract more data from/about you, profile you better, and sell you to advertisers as a more targeted and qualified prospect (ad retargeting anyone).” (Graywolf’s SEO Blog)

26 Tips for Using Pinterest for Businesses

Here’s an A-Z guide for creating a business presence on Pinterest. The list touches upon topics such as brands and Pinterest, crowdsourcing, etiquette, Pinterest and content marketing, and commenting, among other things. (Social Media Examiner)

1 Billion Will Use Mobile as Primary Internet Access Point in 2012

According to a Google-sponsored survey, more than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary Internet access point in 2012. The study also found that 95 percent of smartphone owners use a search engine on their smartphone in general, while 82 percent use a search engine on their smartphone at least once a week. (Search Engine Land)

4 Digital Advertising Trends You Can’t Ignore

Marketing online is more than a social media strategy, email newsletter and sound SEO strategy. If you want to get on the cutting edge of things, consider these four hot trends: 1) ad campaigns that are social by design; 2) narrowing your target market with Facebook; 3) making Web analytics work for you; and 4) optimizing for social. (Search Engine Journal)

Buddy Media Busy Brighter Option

Buddy Media, a leading Facebook developer, has acquired Facebook advertising developer Brighter Option. “Joining forces with Buddy Media will enable us to provide a comprehensive social marketing software suite unlike anything available on the market,” said Brighter Option’s CEO and founder. (AllFacebook)

Google Affiliate Network Adds New ‘Orders’ Tab

As part of its effort to improve the Google Affiliate Network interface, the company has just released a new version of the Orders tab for advertisers and publishers. The changes include faster query results, easier canceling of orders in bulk and the display of locked orders. (Google Affiliate Network)

Consumers Consumers Are Getting Turned off by Online Ads

A report from YouGov, commissioned by Upstream, found that people feel like they’re seeing too many ads and that they’re too frequently seen. “The situation seems to be a vicious circle. Users are engaging with ads less and less: response rates that were at an average of 7 percent in 1997 have today plummeted down to 0.1 percent for an average online ad.” (TechCrunch)

Blekko Tests Search Ads

Startup search engine Blekko recently began testing search ads, though it doesn’t have direct relationships with any confirmed brands right now. “It looks like right now this is just a small test, which means the majority of searches on Blekko won’t show ads and it’s highly unlikely you’ll see any PPC ads yet.” (Search Engine Watch)

Paid Search as Trusted as TV Product Placement Ads Are

According to a Nielsen report, ads that appear on branded websites were most trusted by U.S. consumers, followed by ads on TV, product placements on TV programs and ads served in search engine results. The latter two received the same number of responses (36 percent). (Marketing Land)

Facebook Gaming Slumps in the Q4 2011

According to research from IHS iSuppli, 2011 saw a notable drop in Facebook gaming. In 2011, 25 percent of Facebook’s monthly active users were gamers, down from 50 percent in 2010. “And while Facebook’s active users continue to grow, the drop in gamers is a good reminder that Facebook is a non-specialist games platform.” (Digital Trends)

How I Got 10 Powerful Links to My Infographic in 2 Days

Here’s a look at how this content creator created an infographic and got it republished 10 times in the span of two days. Among the seven steps are to publish an infographic on your own blog, create interesting descriptions and wait for the offers. (SEO Smarty)

Bing Linked Pages

Bing announced a new feature called Linked Pages, which make search results for you and your friends more personalized and richer. “Linked Pages lets you tell Bing which pages in the search results are specifically about your friend.” (Search Engine Land)

Facebook to Replace Homepage Ads With Page Post Units

Facebook will be requiring its premium homepage ads to be in Page post format. “This a change that brands were informed of last month, in which Facebook’s premium ad units that point onsite will now also be associated with a Page post on Facebook,” according to a company spokesperson. A leaked document revealed that Page posts get 40 percent more engagement, are 80 percent more likely to be remembered and increase fan rate by 16 percent compared to other types of ads. (Inside Facebook)

Google Creeping up on Facebook in Display Ad Market

Facebook raked in $1.73 billion in net U.S. online display ad revenue in 2011, followed by Google with $1.71 billion and Yahoo! with $1.35 billion. Google is expected to surpass Facebook in 2013. (eMarketer)

What Is a Good CTR for a Facebook Ad?

Here’s a no-frills rundown of what a good CTR for a Facebook ad is. The optimal CTR is 0.11-0.16 percent, though it depends what you consider “good.” (IMGrind.com)

The New SEO Process: Stop Being Kanye

“To do effective SEO now, at the very least, you have to be a digital strategist, social media marketer, a content strategist, conversion rate optimizer, and a PR specialist.” The pieces of the puzzle are opportunity discovery, content strategy/development, technical development, social strategy/implementation, measurement and optimization. Also involved is not being like Kanye West. (SEOmoz)

New Yahoo CEO Says Display Advertising Is the Highest Priority

Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson said reviving the company’s struggling display advertising business is his “highest priority.” One analyst noted that Thompson seems to have a greater sense of urgency than his predecessors had. (Reuters)

13 Popular PPC Campaign Tactics to Avoid

Here’s a list of 13 common PPC tactics that sometimes work but can ruin an account. Among them are resting on the laurels of your top PPC campaigns, creating super-granular PPC campaigns, and creating separate search and mobile campaigns. (PPC Hero)

4 Foundational Secrets to PPC Advertising

Advertise where your prospects are; advertise when your prospects are receptive to your offer; match your offer to your prospect’s immediate desire: and focus on ROI, not cost. These are the four secrets to PPC advertising gleaned from the Central Drakensberg region of South Africa. (Search Engine Watch)

A List of Link-Building Strategies

Here’s a comprehensive list of link-building strategies, spanning the basic, to submission-based, to content-based, to linkbait and beyond. (Point Blank SEO)

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