Compete has recently released Audience Profiles on Compete.com. This free offering allows website owners to gain never before seen insights about their online audiences.  

Audience Profiles allow site owners to look beyond standard demographics and discover the lifestyle preferences, hobbies, and interests of their online audiences. These insights can then be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns and attract more customers. 

All you need do is go to audience profiles at compete.com and sign up for a myCompete account and copy some simple XL code onto your home page.   

Within a month, you should be able to see some quantifiable data on your web audience – information that will help you create defined messaging and targeted marketing campaigns. 

Compete.com is a ‘must-have’ resource for web analytics, competitor analysis and now, audience profiles.  

To learn more about Compete.com – go here. 

To learn more about the significance of Audience Analysis – go here. 

Best

Denice MacDonald  

Google has a new feature that allows users the ability to leave annotations or notes within in analytics charts, helping to explain sudden spikes or drops in traffic.

Annotations allow analytic users to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph in an effort to let users bring intelligence to data.

The Annocation's feature will be available in January of 2010.

To learn more about this powerful new feature before it's official launch, access this YouTube video.

More about "Annotations":

From Google Blog: Holiday Bonus - More Great Features 

From TechCrunch: Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade With Annotations, New API And More

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Anyone who has a vested interest in a corporate or personal blog knows it takes time and effort to produce a great blog. I personally belong to a dozen blogs and try to read them each day. From a personal standpoint, I can tell you what keeps me clicking back and what I look for in other blogs.

Here are my 'must-haves' for a successful blog.

Blogger shows enthusiasm for his/her blog. If it's written to fill space, I can tell. I’m only interested in blogs that surprise, delight, amuse and inform.

The blog is well written. I read certain blogs because I not only enjoy reading them, but I’m truly getting information that is important to me – in a style of writing that is more conversational and with the bloggers point of view (good or bad) in mind.

The blog has links to other blogs, newsfeeds or other relevant information. I want to know that this blog is going to get me the next relevant click of information. I love resources, links back to other blogs and creditable information so that I can understand the bloggers opinion or slant.

The blog is updated regularly. There’s nothing worse than finding a great blog only to find out that the blogger blogs on a sporadic basis. I want a blog to be committed to me, the reader, by providing ongoing, updated content – especially if I have subscribed to their feeds.

The blog embraces comments and feedback. I welcome an opportunity to comment on content and provide my opinion on topics. More sophisticated blogs allows sign in and the ability to post comments making the blog very interactive and viral in nature.

The blog is properly tagged and categorized. Make it easy for me to move around your blog, clicking on other categories or relevant tags.

More Great Bloggers:

The Rules Behind Creating a Great Blog by Tom Hung, ProBlogger

27 Tips for Building a Kick-ass Blog by Ahmed Bilal

What Makes a Great Company Blog by Mack Collier

Best

Denice MacDonald

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey recently gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture “Square” – a device that allows its users to make credit card payments through their cell phones.

Square is a card reader about one inch in length that attaches to the headphone socket of most cell phones. 

The device contains a magnetic strip reader that allows a user to swipe a card, which will then coordinate online with card issuers and banks through a mobile application on the user’s cell phone. 

Basically, the Square works very similarly to card swipers that you see in most retail stores.

The device is scheduled to be available for iPods and iPhones in March 2010. 

View the latest "Square" YouTube video from TechCrunch    

Sources: 

After Twitter, Comes Square - By Richard Neil Ilagan, The News Chronicle

Creator Reveals Square Mobile-pay Device - By Barry Neild, CNN

Best

Denice MacDonald

Grooveshark is the most inclusive and fully-featured on-demand music service on the Web. With an unmatched catalog of music, millions of users flock to the site to listen to their favorite artists as well as discover music and share tracks with friends.

Listening to any song instantly, creating playlists to return to later, or simply accessing a quick favorite song are the fundamentals of Grooveshark's offering.

How are they capturing marketshare?

Grooveshark delivers the world's music to the world more easily than any other site online and receives its support from advertising as well as a premium VIP subscription service. In fact, visitors and subscribers can opt out of advertising for $3 per month. 

Also, the much anticipated Grooveshark Mobile applications will further monetize the service and Grooveshark's unique and innovative platform for breaking artists keeps it one step ahead in being a competitive, sustainable and profitable business.

Bottomline, these guys are awesome and you need to check them out! 

Features – see how unique and differentiated Grooveshark is relative to other music on-demand sites 

Free Stuff – all types of wallpaper from Abstract to Shark wallpaper free for download

Join Now – fast, easy and worth it!

Best,

Denice MacDonald 

[Source info and company background taken directly from Grooveshark]  

According to Wikipedia, a review site is a web site on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

Just for fun, I have compiled a list of review sites for your use and review. Not only can you use these sites personally, but there certainly is a plethora of learning and insight relative to functionality and user interaction. This learning can be translated to both business and consumer web sites. In particular is the wide use of mobile technology.

MOVIES:   Rotten Tomatoes

Fresh or rotten, this site sums up what all of the critics are saying about most every movie and DVD. From ratings to polling’s, you can insure that this site offers ‘transparent’ critiques. 

RESTAURANTS:     Yelp!

Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great – and not so great – in your area. the site includes restaurants, shopping, nightlife and more. By setting up a profile, the site will automatically serve up content that is important to the user - including mobile alerts and content. 

SHOPPING:     RedPearl

RedPearl provides ratings, rankings, and reviews for thousands of web sites including the top sites in over 100 shopping categories. The site is extensive and includes ratings for anything from baby to garden supplies to travel gear. There is definitely something for everyone at this site.

FAMILY FOCUS:     Pluggedin Online

Plugged In is a Focus on the Family publication designed to help equip parents with the essential tools that will enable them to understand, navigate and impact the culture in which they live. Site includes reviews and ratings on TV, DVD, Music and Movies available online and by mobile alerts. 

MUSIC:     MSN Music

MSN Music includes concerts in your area, latest music releases and access to ratings on all types of music genre. The site also includes timely music news, a dedicated blog and mobile downoads. 

Enjoy!

Denice MacDonald

Online holiday retail sales will grow 8% this year to $44.7 billion, predicts Forrester Research Inc. That would represent a continued shift of shopping to the web, as the National Retail Federation has forecast total retail sales will decline 1% this holiday season.

So, before you go online to shop, check out these great 'coupon' websites that provide discounts and promo codes for top retailers like Old Navy, Target, Kohls and as well as computer giants such as Dell.   

RetailMeNot: Coupon Codes [Above]

FatWallet: Online Coupons 

DealCatcher: Free Online Coupons

MyCoupons.com: Grocery Coupons and Online Coupons

Deal of Day: Coupon Codes

The Bargainist: Coupons & Coupon Codes

Dealnews: Online Coupons 

Now - get out there and start shopping!

Best,

Denice MacDonald 

My colleague James Davidson just forwarded a Google Wave invite to me – what an amazing application.   

Google Wave, accessible through Google Browser Chrome, is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. 

To make sense of it all, Mashable has compiled a complete user guide offering key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave.  

This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications and goes over ways to keep you informed. Get it here: Google Wave – A Complete Guide by Mashable  

YouTube also has several abridged videos on how Google Wave works along with key attributes. 

Google Wave is closed to the public and available only to developers. Google plans on opening the service to the public at some point later in 2009. If you are interested in getting on the list for an invite, you will need to go here and sign up. 

Best

Denice MacDonald                                                                         View YouTube Video

According to AMR Research -- web content management isn’t just about building and managing a web site anymore. It’s about engaging customers and collaborating more efficiently with partners.

To prove this point, AMR Research recently released a white paper: “Evolved Web Strategies, Part 1: The Web as a Vital Artery for Strategy and Growth”.

The piece, written by Jim Murphy of AMR, states that organizations will need to examine four streams of change when devising a web strategy and choosing technology providers: strategic, pervasive, engaging, and responsive. 

1. Fatwire
2. Oracle
3. Interwoven
4. Vignette
5. Sitecore
6. SDL Tridion
7. Ektron
8. EMC
9. IBM
10. Microsoft 

Upcoming

AMR intends to provide a follow-up white paper wherein they will look at the pervasive web and the providers that will help companies meet impending challenges. 

About AMR Research

AMR Research provides subscription advisory services and peer networking opportunities to supply chain, sustainability, and IT executives in the consumer products, life sciences, manufacturing, and retail sectors. They are the world’s leading independent research firm focused on the global supply chain and its supporting technologies. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

MacDonald Consulting has just been notified by Surchur, the dashboard to right now, that it has launched a new socially powered search feature to add to an already advanced set of real time search tools. BTW - this is on top of a record month in which Surchur outgrew every one of the independent real time search engines on the web.

The socially powered search feature aggregates information from twitter, digg, other social sites and their own site users to give a view into the hottest websites for a given topic.

You can view the new feature by visiting a sample ‘surch’ for “social networking” at http://surchur.com/all/social+networking. The new ‘popular tab’ contains the socially ranked results alongside the original related feature tabs: blogs, social news, news, video, pictures and products.

Also, Surchur, is asking if you or your organization is interested, you can interview their founder, Todd Hogan -- he’d be happy to give you a web demo of just how powerful the new set of features are – and why Surchur will be driving the next wave in real time search innovation.

About [from Surchur website] 

“surchur.com is the ultimate dashboard to right now. Built by a team that is passionate about what the real time web can offer, we're constantly improving and updating our site. Our latest version takes a giant leap forward with a massive social implementation. User input is taking a much needed front seat in determining what we show. Check it out - we think you'll swoon.” 

I highly recommend that you take a look at this great search tool! 

Best

Denice MacDonald

There’s always been an understanding that IT takes care of the back-end, while Marketing takes care of the front-end relative to web initiatives. But now, the lines of responsibilities are somewhat blurred. 

As an e-business strategist, I now have to be knowledgeable in content management systems (all types including open source, java and .net), e-commerce solutions (SMB and Enterprise) as well as fluent in hosting environments that support diverse applications – including cloud computing. 

Bottom-line, web sites that are being built today require an understanding of various infrastructure components and applications. Reason simply, the technology will inform the marketing strategy and vice versa. The two need to work in tandem.

How do I stay on top of things?

Fortunately I have a superior network to call upon. But, when I need an answer fast, I typically rely on some of these great resources: 

1. Content Management Systems: The Web CMS Report 2010 
2. E-commerce: Internet Retailer  
3. IT and IT Infrastructure: SearchITChannel 
4. IT White Papers/Thought Leadership: KnowledgeStorm -- service of Bitpipe.com 
5. Search Engine Optimization: SEOMoz 
6. Cloud Computing: Vendor Comparisons by InfoWorld 

Feel free to contact MacDonald Consulting should you require a specific resource. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

There’s been quite a bit written about the transformation of the telecommunications industry -- bringing the continued existence of the fixed-landline phone usage into question -- not to mention those costly web conferencing solutions.

Consider Skype as a viable alternative for both.

Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. The big advantage – it’s free to download.

As a business consultant who routinely runs projects virtually, it is rare that I have a chance to make a face-to-face with a colleague or client. Now, with Skype, I have an opportunity to truly be ‘in the room’ without worrying about time or cost. 

Skype Links: 

1. Features
2. Mobile
3. What’s Free!
4. Skype for Businesses 

 [Credit: Skype for content, graphics and links] 

Best

Denice MacDonald

According to Nielsen, Bing is the fastest growing search engine. Although Google still leads the pack with a 65 percent share of searches, Bing’s overall search share rose by roughly 22 percent to almost 11 percent of total searches.  

Bing is not trying to grow expedientially – rather, they are trying to build market share one great application at a time. 

Check Out Visual Search! 

Bing continues to tech-up its attractiveness by introducing a visual search feature. When users perform a search and click the ‘visual’ button (left side of screen), search results are arranged into rows of virtual data arranged into galleries. Because most individuals ‘browsing’ the web prefer graphic images over text, this is an awesome solution. 

Take my recent search for ‘movies’ – I am able to view, visually, movies that peak my interest. Or, I can simply refine my search by ratings, genre and more. The only downside to this feature is you will need to have Silverlight enabled. But non-the-less, after using this feature, you have to admit that it’s a great way to search. 

More on Bing:  

Microsoft’s Bing vs.Google: Head to Head Search Results by SearchEngineLand 

Search Smackdown: Bing vs.Google by TechCrunch 

Best

Denice MacDonald

If you are looking for the technology to put your video on the web, the variety of choices can be staggering. That’s because as web video has flourished, so have the number of companies providing the tools to deliver video across the Internet.

Large media companies and individual video bloggers can now choose from among multiple firms when looking for a web video product. Many of the technology providers are quite similar and anyone in the market for a web video platform should 'test the waters' and try out the ones that seem like the best fit.  

Web video technology services can be divided into the following categories:

CONTENT MANAGEMENT: The process of ingesting content, moving it around, converting to different files and organizing video properly before it goes online.

PROGRAMMING AND PUBLISHING: The presentation of the video on the web site, including the player and the playlists.

DISTRIBUTION: Delivering the video across the web, to either the main site or to distribution channels and portals.

MONETIZATION: Making money off the video, by integrating advertising or offering video on a download or pay-per-view basis.

REPORTING: Providing analysis and reports on number of views, length of views and other similar data. 

Check out these vendors and resources: 

Dragonfly (world-class multi-media content delivery network)

Kickapps (great for online communities or any type of 'sharing' portal)

Maven (online video advertising)

Magnify (good for both b2c and b2b)

UPDATED: Video for Mobile, Twitter and YouTube: 

Check out the recent craze for using video in social media campaigns posted October 1st by Adveristing Age: How to Mobilize Your Social Media.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Sharing ideas can become a much easier task when using mind mapping software. Mind mapping allows groups of individuals or participants to formulate relationships between ideas or other forms of information – visually and quickly. 

There are lots of creative mapping tools out there – some are free and some are built in various types of web formats. With easy linking and ‘drop and drag’ functionality, mind mapping tools can allow users to capture and share strategic knowledge in a Web-based visual collaborative workspace. 

Just think – no more lengthy, linear outlines or messy flowcharts. Mind Maps allows the integration of all these components – in real time. 

There are a number of free software packages that allow the creation of, or otherwise support mind maps. Likewise, there is also proprietary and more sophisticated packages available in basic or pro versions with paid subscriptions. 

Mind Mapping Comparison:  

To see a complete list of Mind Mapping Software – comparing all types of features and benefits, download this PDF from Mindmapper.com. 

Mind Mapping and Business Plans:

Freemind provides a gallery of sample mind maps so you can see how others use Freemind to create mind maps. Business Plan Generator is a free business planning template in Freemind's mind map gallery under the Business Procedures mind maps.

Note: The mind map example being shown here is for educational purposes only. Permission should be sought regarding all other reproductions from info@illumine.co.uk. Mind Maps are registered trademarks of the Buzan Organisation.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Company executives always say they believe customer loyalty
is the key to business success. 

However, customer care solutions, CRM systems, and discount programs are not enough and companies are losing customers at a staggering rate. Fostering true customer loyalty and engagement starts at the basic level. 

That being said, the following is a great white paper offering the simplest tactics to get customers engaged to provide you quantifiable feedback on your relationship with them. 

Allegiance_TechPaper_9ideas.pdf (891.88 kb)

Also, the vendor does a great job of presenting the business case for their product here: www.allegiance.com/engage  

I highly recommend that you take a look at this vendor, read the white paper and begin a lasting business relationship with your clients, employees and stakeholders. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Do you need a quick down and dirty way to get transparent usability on your web initiative? Do you need a way to get feedback from clients on early designs? 

Consider using Usabilla – an online web application that offers a fast and simple way to collect visual feedback on any web page, mockup, sketch, or image. 

Ask your users about their opinion or first impression in just a few minutes. You can invite your users to participate and share their opinion. 

Your users answer your questions by simply adding datapoints and notes on top of your web page, mock up, or any other image. 

To get started, check out Usabilla features here or sign up now for a free account.

I would highly recommend this tool!

Best

Denice MacDonald

KeywordSpy^TM - a powerful web-based keyword intelligence system - has announced the unveiling of KeywordSpy Version 3.0. 

What’s so great about this upgrade? Version 3.0 is a compilation of user feedback – elevating the product version to an all new level based on customer interaction and use. 

New features include:

1. Daily scans of over 127 million keywords in our database.
2. Advanced searching options including destination url and ad copy searches.
3. ROI Indicator to easily pinpoint profitable keywords and ad copy combination.
4. Competitor sub-domains related & misspelled keyword results.
5. Support over 80 major affiliate networks for a high-end affiliate research.

 If you are interested in learning more about this great product, sign up now for a free trial.

About KeywordSpy

KeywordSpy currently operates in USA, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Through this keyword tool and keyword software, you can perform advanced keyword research and keyword tracking to study what your competitors have been advertising in their Adwords campaigns and Other PPC campaigns. You can now get complete in-depth analysis, stats, budget, affiliates & ad copies of your competitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Dimdim is a simple, free open source web conferencing service.  Dimdim lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet - with no download required.   

Dimdim is available as open source software so you can extend and improve it freely. Dimdim already integrates with CRM and LMS software and can be extended easily.

Moreover, Dimdim is extremely flexible, available in hosted and onsite configurations and easily customizable. 

For more information on this new and evolving product, go to Dimdim’s video tour page.

Best

Sensidea, a digital media consultancy, has launched an amazing social monitoring tool called “socialseek.” 

According to Sensidea: “With wide reach, cool charts, comparing topics, and exporting results and charts, socialseeks makes it simple and easy to understand your social status, track against the competition, and make decisions to stay in the scene...and do it right from your desktop.”

The application includes the following features:

>Seek Blogs, Tweets, Videos, Images, and Events 

>Add any site you want to track, no problem

>Real-time automatic updates and notifications

>Track all the chatter by city or anywhere

>Find something interesting? One click away

>Compare topics to see what's making more noise

>Quick charts to see trends and track what's hot

>Export results to CSV & PDF

>Brands Track yourself against the competition

>Windows & Mac Compatible 

Get socialseek here now.

To learn more about Sensidea, an incredible, upcoming digital company, go here.

Best

Denice MacDonald