How to Select Strong Passwords

Great article from the TweetLater newsletter about setting strong passwords that are easy to remember.  Good passwords that you change occasionally are the best method to protect your data.

How to Choose Very Strong Passwords

Is Social Network Advertising Ready for Primetime?

Interesting article about the changes in advertising on social networking sites from eMarketer.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007165

Not sure if your web site is valuable?

Check out these statistics from eMarketer. Then go update your web site!!
Reporting as "very valuable"

74% = the Internet
51% = at-work contacts
43% = outside-work contacts
63% = general search engines
31% = links from web sites or other online content

Full Article  execs-go-online-for-business-intelligence.PDF

Michael Gerber interview in The Social Media Bible

Lon Safko, co-author of The Social Media Bible, interviewed Michael Gerber, author of The E Myth books about the value of social media to business.  A couple of quotes from the interview:

"Social media is simply an identification of the technological resource that is available to everyone. The either take advantage of it, they either utilize it, or they fail to. And if they fail to, they cannot build a competitive advantage in their company."

"I do not believe that technology is critical to entrepreneurship; I believe creativity is..."

Listen or read the entire interview here.

Expanded Use of Coupons in Marketing

Interesting article about the increase in using coupons as a marketing tool. It's very easy to add a coupon to an email message.

Click! So What?

Interview with Gian Fulgoni, Chairman, comScore,  from eMarketer web site

eMarketer: Have we moved away from the click as a proxy for online advertising effectiveness?

Gian Fulgoni: Publishers would be out of their minds to take an average click rate of 0.1% to an advertiser or an agency and say, “Here’s an indication of advertising effectiveness.” It’s not the right metric. It’s a really short-term view of how advertising works as a direct-response-oriented vehicle and not a branding-oriented one.

Let’s say I’m BMW. Do I want to reach a 20-year-old kid who can’t afford to buy a BMW today? The direct response people would say, “No, don’t target with the Internet.” They would target those people who are about to buy a car. That’s one view.

The branding people would say that at some point, the 20-year-old kid is going to buy a BMW or a Lexus or a Mercedes, so let’s make sure that he has the BMW brand value and equity in his head. Otherwise, he’s going to buy a Mercedes or a Lexus.

Read the full article