What is a Marketing Kit and why do you need one?

Think of a marketing kit as a portfolio that showcases your company's products or service.

A marketing kit is an enabler for attracting new customers, educating existing customers, forming new partnerships, educating suppliers, and informing media prospects. A good marketing kit is so powerful it stops and makes people think:

Do you have hundreds or even thousands of articles hiding behind those "previous" buttons on the bottom of your page? I bet that many of you do. They, unfortunately, offer little or no value to your readers. Valuable page views are being lost if you fail to make an honest attempt to promote past content.

If you aren't, you should be.  Here's a great example of how one of the

country's biggest companies is using a very personal touch to provide

excellent customer service, and create evangelists for their brand.

Kami Huyse is one of the more popular PR bloggers on the internet, and recently she started having problems with her HP desktop computer.  She finally decided that the computer was on its last legs, and needed to be replaced ASAP.  The problem was, she needed a new computer immediately, and couldn't wait for one to be shipped to her.

Web design or re-design with artists, musicians, painters, poets, or crafters can be challenging. They usually have their "vision" which may or may not be technically possible. From the start, I tell the artist that their website or blog is their stage, totally under their control. From design to attention-getting content. It's their performance hall. An outlet for their creative expression. Do with it what you will - however, a few guidelines along the way will make it a more effective performance, no different than learning how to project and control your voice, develop stage presence, and learn the techniques of connecting with their audience.

Just a quick post to point out how royally stupid people can be. After we commented on his interview with Rand yesterday, Mike Blumenthal shows us how Google Mapspam takes on international flavor.

Check out what happens when you search for [mechanic Melbourne Australia]:

For serious?

According to ConversionRate, this Melbourne-based mobile mechanic decided it would be wise to spam his business into 500 locations in Google Maps, even though they really only have one location. Still, they decided that it was their right to show up for every main street located in Melbourne. Sweet!

As the owner of a search marketing company I spend a lot of time thinking about, and talking to, people about online marketing. Whenever I talk to people within the industry about social media marketing, it becomes apparent quite quickly what aspect of social media that they focus on.

Social media marketers fall into four camps; Linkers, Traffickers, Bloggers, or Explorers. Each camp takes a different approach to social media marketing. Which camp do you belong to?

Posted by randfish

I think Lee Odden did an excellent job with his piece on The Fallacy of SEO Celebrity. In the post, he explains why pursuing a goal of recognition without an idea of what you want to do with it can be so dangerous:

An amazing number of people seem to think becoming well known in the search marketing business is an end in and of itself. Not seeing the forest for the trees, these folks put vast amounts of time into link bait ridden blogs, networking up and getting addicted to the rush of ego that comes from being recognized. Is it because they misunderstand reputation marketing or are they really thinking being a "SEO celebrity" is a bankable goal?...

At a talk tomorrow at Stanford University, Bill Gates will announce that they are making much of their developer software free to college and university students. The program, called Microsoft DreamSpark, will be run by Joe Wilson, Senior Director of Academic Initiatives.

Covered software includes Visual Studio Professional Edition, XNA Game Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server. Students were previously able to license this software at greatly reduced prices, or got access via their CS department at school (or through other, less legal, means). Now they'll be able to get the software for free.

In 2000 artist Noah Kalina started taking a photo of himself every day. In August 2006, he put together a nearly 6 minute video of these photos, chronicling over 2300 days, up on YouTube. It has since been viewed over 8 million times and has spawned a number of imitators (though it should be noted that some of these immitation videos were in progress before Kalina put his video on the web). What Kalina and others did always struck me as a good idea and a really interesting way to visually track the changes in our outward appearance. I started on a project of my own to take a daily picture of my face after seeing Kalina's YouTube video, but I quickly found out that taking a picture of yourself every day can be a major pain in the butt.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Interactive nightclubs aren't entirely unheard of, but we'll be sure to relieve ourselves just before prancing into any party scene with these displays on the lavatory doors. The small LED Matrix displays can be mounted on both male and female doors, and the image shown can be switched as folks enter and leave. Needless to say, such a setup caused quite a bit of hilariousness / confusion when caught on candid camera, so be sure and take a peek for yourself after the break.