WebMarketCentral, the portal site with resources for interactive marketing professionals, continues to expand with the recent addition of marketing, sales and CRM-focused webcasts and videos powered by Insight24. This is the place to see the latest expert rich media presentations from sources like Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies ; the Business Intelligence Network; HubSpot; Microsoft; Entellium; and SalesRoundup. It's a one-stop page for marketing-focused intelligence from market leaders. A valuable resource for sales and marketing practitioners, the new webcasts and videos page is likely to join the web's most comprehensive marketing events calendar , directory of advertising and marketing trade publications , and Marketing, Advertising and Sales Career Opportunities as one of the most-visited pages on the site. Looking for engaging content from leading sales and marketing experts? Check out the new Webcasts and Videos page on WebMarketCentral. ***** techno...

A number of new social networking, social search, social bookmarking, and other Web 2.0-related websites and tools either got their start or got traction in 2007. Here are some of the most notable new sites and tools that made it onto the radar last year. Go2Web20.net Billed as "the complete Web 2.0 directory," this site has cataloged more than 2,000 Web 2.0 applications and services, searchable by an extensive list of tags and sortable by date and name. Snitter Snitter is a small desktop application that makes it easy to keep up with those you are following on Twitter, a social networking site that lets you keep "followers" up to date on what you're up to, and stay in the loop on what they're doing. KickApps A hosted web-based platform that enables webmasters and site owners to create, deploy and manage a branded social media community on any website. Socialtext An enterprise wiki tool that enables workgroups or organizations to create secure, group-editabl...

You've heard it a million times: "You can't manage what you can't measure." One of the most appealing aspects of online marketing is the ability to test and measure virtually anything, in detail and with great precision. But which metrics are really important? And how can you most effectively use web analytics to make productive changes? Here are some of the best articles and blog posts from 2007 on optimizing the use of web analytics. Practical Guide to Website Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) by Search Engine Journal Writer Julie Mason details the key website performance indicators that "help you measure the effectiveness of your website with quantifiable and actionable results," including page views per visit, visits per lead and cost per lead. Bloggers Ponder Google’s RSS Syndication Stats by MediaPost Online Spin Following Google's acquisition of Feedburner , Max Kalehoff ponders the importance of the "reach" metric for bloggers. ...

Within an astonishingly short time, Wikipedia has become one of the most-visited sites on the Internet. Consequently, Wikipedians—the self-appointed guardians of what is and isn't permissible for inclusion on the site—have become very powerful in determining what you are permitted to know about any topic, and even which topics are worthy of inclusion. It's been said that with great power comes great responsibility. That responsibility isn't always handled properly. For example, Wikipedia's list of social networking websites now contains 111 entries; an impressive list, but certainly not all-inclusive. To the credit of Wikipedians, the list is now much better than it was just a few months ago, when it contained only 43 entries, but it is still behind the curve. Then there is the matter of commercial content. While no one wants to see Wikipedia degenerate into a collection of marketing brochures, the site's prohibition on commercial speech seems to be unclear and une...

The first step in crafting a marketing plan is to determine overall strategy, and among the first questions to ask when thinking about the strategy are "What do I want my brand to stand for?" and "What are best ways to communicate my brand message?" Here are a collection of the best online articles and blog posts to help you think about the big picture and answer the big questions about brand-building and marketing strategy. All-in-One Guides: Marketing strategy by TechTarget A comprehensive guide for B2B marketers with advice on everything from preparing a marketing plan and using marketing automation technology to designing and executing effective marketing campaigns. Marketers Can Buy Buzz by MediaPost Online Spin Max Kalehoff of Clickable presents some interesting findings on the (highly positive) correlation between media spending and word-of-mouth "buzz." While the research was focused on commercial packaged goods, the findings likely apply across...

The most crucial single element of SEO is the content on a website. Everything else—h1 and h2 tags, emphasizing key phrases through bolding, meta tag optimization, SEO-friendly URLs, etc.—is driven by the site's copy. It's not unusual to see horribly optimized sites still show up well across the search engines for certain terms based solely on their content. With that in mind, here are a few of the best articles and blog posts from 2007 on optimizing website copy for SEO. Google Guy Tips And Formula For Top Ranking by SEOmization This short post, based on evaluating comments made by Google's Matt Cutts across various online forums, may be the single best piece written in all of 2007 about search engine optimization, and this sentence on how to use key phrases may be the single best bit of SEO guidance: "Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page." SEO Copywriting by...

I was recently invited to give a presentation on the "do's and don'ts" of creating a successful business blog. In thinking about the topic, words beginning with the letter "p" kept coming to mind: Persistence: the number one reason, by far, that blogs fail is that they aren't maintained. The blogosphere is littered with dead blogs that haven't been updated in three, six, twelve months or longer. They'll still pick the occasional search hit for an obscure phrase, but no one links, subscribes or offers comments to them. Personality: the best blogs have a personality all their own: factual, thoughtful, helpful, smart, amusing or something else. The blogger also reveals himself or herself through a short bio, picture and contact information. Passion: to maintain the discipline necessary to be persistent in blog posting, it helps to pick a subject one is passionate about. For example, among political blogs, there are a number of strong blogs on the...

Wikipedia defines interactive PR as "the practice of using Internet tools and technologies such as search engines, Web 2.0 social bookmarking, new media relations and blogging...to build awareness of and credibility for (a) message without relying solely on mainstream publications." More directly, the techniques of interactive PR transform press releases from bland, internally-focused documents clogging up the inboxes of editors and staff writers into keyword-rich, user-oriented prose that is found by search engines, picked up by bloggers, tagged by readers, and creates a dialog with the market though comments on social media sites. David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing & PR provides an excellent primer on the subject. Expanding beyond the scope of his book, here are some of the best articles and blog posts of 2007 on maximizing the impact of public relations activities through interactive PR. Proof You Can Gain Additional Rankings And Build Relevant Lin...