Using nature is a great way to market a product. By creating a soft and warm atmosphere you can make your product have the image of being soft, gentle and warm just like [Snuggle fabric softener](http://www.snuggle.com/home.asp). So if you want to brand your product as being soft and personal like Snuggle you may want to use nature in your marketing and advertising campaigns. …
Archive for October, 2006
Interview with Lee Odden
For quite a long time I have been reading [Lee Odden's blog](http://www.toprankblog.com/) and have had the privilege to meet Lee in person at a few conferences. Lee has been in the industry for 9 years and he has a unique approach on PR and SEO. Because of this I asked him a few questions through an email interview. Here are the questions and his answers.
When will people realize, you get what you pay for!
You wouldn’t let your nephew be your accountant, so why would you hire him to build your website? That’s pretty much the question Todd Malicoat is asking with his latest post titled “[You wear a suit to work, but let your nephew design your website?](http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/10/11/you-wear-a-suit-to-work-but-let-your-nephew-design-your-website/)”
What’s your blog juice
Have you ever wondered how popular your blog is compared to other blogs in your industry? You might be able to figure this out by doing a simple backward link check, but that only shows you a small part of the full picture. Why not compare traffic or even RSS subscribers to get a more complete picture? Today [Text Link Ads](http://www.text-link-ads.com) released a [tool](http://www.text-link-ads.com/blog_juice/) that compares the popularity of your blog to others by taking multiple variables into account.
Casinos and Conversion
Last week, Matt from 37signals wrote “[The casino experience](http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/the_casino_experience.php)” that analyzes a casino from a design perspective. Matt hits on points such as the fact that casinos have no windows, no clocks, and they are hard to navigate, which are all great ways to keep people gambling. From a marketing perspective you can actually take many of these principles that casinos use to help improve your conversion rate.
Best practices for online customer communities
Communispace, a company that builds private communities for corporations, put out a press release for the 10 Best Practices for Online Customer Communities. Private label social networks and communities that are built around brands & products are starting to become more commonplace as companies begin to realize just how powerful they can be.
MySpace becomes biggest referrer to Viagra.com
No, not really. But more than half of MySpacers are over 35 according to a study from comScore. That’s a wake up call. Although Pete Cashmore from Mashable thinks that statistic is irrelevant…
Stopping the copycats
Sometimes in business you have competitors that love to mimic and copy all of your moves. The worst part about this is that it makes it hard to show your potential customers the benefits of your product compared to your competitor’s product. So what do you do when this happens to you? You can do something so drastic and unexpected that they have no choice but to stop copying you.
Catchup – 10/6/06
* [Google Buys Birthplace Garage](http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061002-082355)
Google has purchased the garage where the company developed after its initial birth at Stanford University. Actually, they’ve purchased the home of Google vice president of product management Susan Wojcicki. Before she became a Google VP, Wojcicki rented the garage attached to her home to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Two-thirds of US economy is driven by buzz
The [Word of Mouth Research Blog](http://www.womma.org/research/studies/buzz_drives_two.htm) from [WOMMA](http://www.womma.org/) points to [an interesting study](http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/1956.html) from A McKinsey & Co. strategy consultant named Renee Dye which shows that buzz drives two-thirds of the US economy. The study is from back in 2001 and was published by the Harvard Business Review. Here are the key findings…
