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Content Marketing
23 Tools to Help Manage Content
November 12, 2012 • Sig Ueland
To ensure your customers have a rich experience with great content, you'll need more than just a content management system. You'll need a basket of tools to research, generate, market, and track your content. Here is a list of tools to help you with content. There are content search-...
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Photography & Video
17 Websites with Video Backgrounds
November 5, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Video is an excellent tool to present a product or a brand, as well as engage an audience with a rich visual experience. And when a website uses video in its background, the effect can be stunning. Here is a list of websites that utilize background videos. There are clothing sites, bev...
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Social Media
17 Social Media Cheat Sheets
October 15, 2012 • Sig Ueland
These days, small businesses use a variety of social media sites in their marketing efforts. Cheat sheets are a helpful way to keep the functionality of each site straight. Here is a list of cheat sheets for the major social media sites. There are infographic tools to identify keyboard...
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Design & Dev Tools
29 New Tools to Develop Your Site
October 9, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Website owners interested in developing their sites can always find a variety of new resources online. Here is a collection of recent tools to develop your site. There are resources to monitor activity, such as backlinks, downtime, and customer behavior. There are wireframe and mockup...
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Typography & Fonts
17 Typography Resources
October 1, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Your customers spend time looking at your site's text, so you'd better make sure your fonts look the way you want. Here is a list of typography resources and tools. There are sites to purchase fonts and access free fonts, typography resources to inspire your design, CSS tools to style ...
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Social Media
Top 20 Viral Marketing Videos
September 18, 2012 • Sig Ueland
If you want to find brand videos having an impact, follow what's being shared. Here is a list of the top 20 shared marketing videos over the last thirty days. Included in this list are non-profit organizations, political campaign videos, and an education documentary. This information...
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Platforms & Apps
18 Gmail Productivity Plugins
September 11, 2012 • Sig Ueland
The right plugin can transform Gmail from a standard email program into a productivity powerhouse, capable of managing your communications and professional networks. Here is a list of productivity plugins for Gmail. There are plugins to schedule emails, track correspondence, manage so...
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Social Media
10 Brand Campaigns on Twitter
September 5, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Twitter is about what’s happening right now. For companies, Twitter can be an effective platform to reach and to interact with an audience. Here is a list of brand campaigns on Twitter. Some of these campaigns use Twitter to deliver rewards to customers. Other campaigns use Twitter to ...
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Platforms & Apps
17 Ecommerce Themes for OpenCart
August 20, 2012 • Sig Ueland
OpenCart is an open-source shopping cart system that is feature-rich and user-friendly, with a large variety of payment gateways and shipping method integrations. OpenCart features many high-quality ecommerce themes to ...
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Social Media
34 People to Follow on Google+
August 14, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Google+ is one year old. While the social network has not achieved the critical mass of Facebook or Twitter, Google+ hosts a large and engaged community that includes entrepreneurial giants, tech visionaries and social media super-stars. Here is a list of people to follow on Google+. E...
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Platforms & Apps
16 Responsive Ecommerce Themes on WordPress
August 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Responsive design allows a business to reach computers, tablets and smartphones from a single website. Here is a list of responsive themes on WordPress for ecommerce sites. Many of these themes are designed to be used with specific ecommerce plugins. All are premium themes, though r...
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Schools & Resources
16 New QR Code Campaigns in 2012
July 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Quick Response (QR) codes continue to appear in creative and inspired marketing promotions. Companies are finding new uses for the codes, as well as new ways to display them. Here is a list of new QR code campaigns in 2012. Some of the QR examples are remarkably inventive, such as Ema...
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Schools & Resources
16 New Ecommerce Books for Summer 2012
July 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Working on your summer reading list? Here is a list of new ecommerce and Internet-marketing books for summer 2012. There are new titles on social media, handcrafted Pinterest businesses, search engine optimization, and even a title on creating short product videos. This list was compil...
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Social Media
20 Top Brands on Socialcam
July 9, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Socialcam is a free video-sharing platform for iOS and Android. Socialcam creates fast and easy clip sharing in the same way that Instagram makes mobile photos instantly sharable. Brands are using the platform to share their stories, as well as deliver engaging entertainment. Here are ...
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Social Media
12 Resources for Custom Facebook Pages
July 3, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Facebook has a whole lot of people to introduce your brand to. It also has a variety of third-party resources to create custom tabs and pages to present your brand. Here is a list of resources to create custom tabs and pages for your brand. Many of these resources offer social apps to...
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SEO Tools
12 Free Google SEO Tools
June 13, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Before you spend any money on a search-engine-optimization campaign for your website, take advantage of Google’s free tools to optimize your site and increase its PageRank. And if you are just starting out with SEO, check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide PDF. Here ...
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Link Building
17 Tools to Analyze Your Links
June 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Monitoring your inbound links is a great way to gauge the progress of your website. Inbound links, or backlinks, give you a picture of who is taking an interest in your site. Compare your inbound links to those of your competing websites, and discover new relationships to build. Here ...
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Social Media
18 Tools to Develop Your Brand on Facebook
May 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland
If you’re look for a place to develop your brand, Facebook is the spot. With over 500 million daily active users, it’s a great platform on which to engage followers and promote yourself. It’s also an ideal environment to monitor how successful you are at engaging and promoting. Here is...
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Marketing & Advertising
23 Tools to Research Your Competition
May 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Sometimes the best way to improve your own business is by taking a hard look at your competitors. By understanding their most and least effective strategies, you can fine-tune your own marketing efforts. Here is a list of competitive research tools. There are tools to research your com...
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Social Media
20 Most-Shared Marketing Videos
May 7, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Online viewers share compelling content. A marketing video that makes an impact can go viral, whether the video is funny, sad, inspiring, or cheaply produced. Here is a list of the most-shared marketing videos, based on the amount of times content is shared on Facebook, Twitter and in ...
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Social Media
23 Twitter Chats for Small Businesses
April 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland
One of the best ways to harness Twitter is by participating in chats, scheduled hashtag discussions that focus on specific topics. Small businesses can utilize chats to develop a social media plan, discuss brand strategy, and take advantage of free legal advice. Here is a list of chats...
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Content Marketing
How Authors, Entertainers Are Selling Their Content Online; 9 Examples
March 28, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Whether through online video, audio, or ebooks, entertainers and authors are finding new access to audiences. In many cases, it's at the expense of established distribution channels. Here is a list of entertainers and authors who have found success in the shift to online media. Some e...
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Social Media
8 Innovative Brand Promotions Using Social Media
March 19, 2012 • Sig Ueland
With the growing number of social media outlets, businesses are developing innovative ways to promote their products, using new tools to engage customers. Here is a list of innovative brand promotions using a variety of social media: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotif...
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Schools & Resources
15 New Ecommerce Books for March 2012
March 13, 2012 • Sig Ueland
The wide adoption of the tablet has created an explosion in ebook publishing. Here is a list of new ecommerce titles, including books on marketing, social media, and email lists. Nearly all of the books are available in digital format, while only one is available in hardcover. One-third...
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Social Media
3 New Facebook Marketing Tools: Timeline, Reach Generator, Premium
March 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland
At last week’s Facebook Marketing Conference, the social media giant unveiled three new marketing solutions to drive business growth using social technology: Timeline, Reach Generator and Premium. Here is a list of Facebook’s new marketing products. Access the conference videos to lear...
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Finance
15 Top Crowdfunding Projects on Kickstarter
February 23, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site to fund entrepreneurial projects in technology, design, film, art, and other creative fields. The video game project Double Fine Adventure has raised two million dollars from over sixty thousand backers, and the funding still has 19 days to go. Within ...
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Payments
6 New Mobile Payment Developments
February 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland
According to investment bank Barclays Capital, purchases made on smartphones and tablets hit $5.3 billion in the U.S. in 2011, up 83 percent from 2010. While mobile purchases are dramatically growing, how mobile consumers actually pay for those items is dramatically changing. Here is ...
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Social Media
14 Brands on Pinterest
February 8, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Business is booming on Pinterest. According to data from Monetate, a testing and personalization firm, from September to December 2011 estimated unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429 percent. Total same-store referral traffic from Pinterest to five specialty apparel retailer...
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Social Media
Top 20 Brands on Google+ for Jan. 2012
January 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland
Google+ launched brand pages in November. Already many companies, groups and organizations have established large numbers of followers on the social network. To check Google+ brand page rankings, you can now use Zoomsphere, a statistics site for major social networks. Track followers, ...
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Social Media
6 Innovative Ecommerce Uses of YouTube
January 18, 2012 • Sig Ueland
With over 3 billion videos viewed every day, YouTube is a great place for online merchants to find customers. However, there are many different ways to engage those customers. Here is a list of innovative uses of YouTube by ecommerce merchants. Some provide product information; others...