Carl discovers the world

For a couple of years now I've been playing around social bookmarking sites, blog communities and other widget type sites like Blogrush, and for almost as long I've been meaning to write up my thoughts about them. Well, at long last, here it is.

Technorati and SEO
I started with Technorati like most bloggers do, I even have all of my tags set to the Technorati standard so they get read properly by the Technorati spider, and it wasn't until I did this that I noticed any traffic from Technorati. I'm one of the fortunate few who use Serendipity as my blog software so I have a plugin that automatically converts my tags into the format they use, and this really is absolutely necessary if you hope to get any serious traffic.

Technorati users seem to work almost exclusively on tag searches. Out of interest, almost all traffic I get is to entries with descriptive titles, and doesn't seem to have anything to do with the description or first paragraph so if you want Technorati traffic, use tags and write good entry titles.

Social Bookmarking
I've also tried Digg and del.icio.us which can be great sites for gaining backlinks and traffic but need to used wisely. Both of my profiles are examples of how not to use these sites if you want to be successful. Let me tell you why, I haven't really used their services for anything other than a half hearted attempt at self promotion, and if I was serious about using them I'd be digging or bookmarking worthy sites within my keyword niche as well as a few of my own entries. In terms of traffic, I get nothing from either of these sites but I'm going to change the way I use them both and try to improve that. Read More

I've taken a bit of an interest in the subject of big bold Outdoor Advertising just recently, mostly because I think the same principles can be used online and I'm trying to learn how the experts do things.

Have a look at the 'Wear a Seat Belt' billboard, now this is clever. As for the guerilla marketing image on the mini, I've seen those when I've been driving around, now I know who's responsible Hah! Read More

I don't often link directly to another blog but today I'm going to. If you want to see the power of subliminal advertising at work, and understand just how much you are affected by it in your day to day activities then do yourself a favour and watch the video the Marketing Blagger's entry the power of subliminal advertising.

Now imagine how you can use these techniques in your own business. I think the trick for any small business owner would be to take a good hard look at their business surroundings, see what your customers are being exposed to as they approach your business, and see if you can find some way of incorporating these ideas into your brand campaign.

Think about a successful advertising campaign, picture in your mind how you were first exposed to it's message, what impact did it have? In researching this article I found myself thinking of the impact that advertising has on my buying decisions, and I came up with a startling observation. I respond to branding messages, perhaps not immediately, but definitely at the buying stage.

Let me give you an example. Every night I have the TV on in the background while I work. My mind automatically switches off when the advertisements air, it has to be a pretty special ad to catch my attention. I don't read newspapers anymore, and hardly ever listen to the radio, so almost all of the advertising that I'm exposed to is in the form of billboards. Read More