News and Information Blog

Performance Marketing Networks: Please Take Our 30 Second Survey

Which is the best performance marketing network?

Who do you love?

What makes them great?

Please take 30 seconds and help us rank the top 20 performance marketing networks. Be the first to receive survey results and a pdf version of the new Blue Book Guide To Ad Networks & Exchanges as soon as it's published. Click here to take survey

Read more here

Hangman: Countries & Cities

It's the old fashion Hangman game, but this time with a new look and additional features. You can choose to play from two categories: Capitals or Countries. Upon successfully guessing the word, detailed information (including the country's location, capital, neighbors, language, population and more) are revealed. Enjoy playing and enrich your knowledge.

Read more here

The Best of the Small Business Technology Summit

Small business analyst Laurie McCabe shares her thoughts and insight on the 2010 Small Business Technology Summit that recently took place in New York City.

Read more here

Baidu Closes Above $600 For First Time

To be a Baidu shareholder must be a wonderful thing. The Chinese company's stock went up yet again today and was at $608.50 when the closing bell rang, making this the first time it's ever ended a trading day above $600.

Here are a couple other numbers sure to make other investors jealous: shares of Baidu actually gained 2.29 percent today, which represents a significant increase, not a symbolic tic. Also, since January 12th (the day Google announced its "new approach to China"), shares are up a whopping 51.91 percent.

What's more, Goldman Sachs has taken the position that Baidu will do even better in the future, with the organization setting its price target at $675 (up from $575) yesterday.

Meanwhile, Google's experienced both ups and downs. Its stock performed well today, gaining 1.52 percent, but looking at its performance after January 12th, the search giant's down 7.28 percent. That'll be hard for execs to explain regardless of how much good the company's done.

A few more figures for comparison's sake: the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 lost 0.48 percent, 0.68 percent, and 0.55 percent today, respectively.

Read more here

Ingenix buys Lincoln health metrics firm

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – Ingenix, the UnitedHealthGroup (NYSE: UNH) company that owns the former LighthouseMD in Providence, has bought another local health care IT firm, QualityMetric Inc., of …

Read more here

eBay Teams With FBI to Fight Retail Theft

The alliance, which also includes the National Retail Federation, aims to attack the billions of dollars in retail theft that occurs each year by limiting what can be fenced online.

Read more here

Twitter Business Lessons from Justin Bieber

If you're not familiar with Justin Bieber (you're excused if you're not a 12-year-old girl), he is 16-year -old singer, who was discovered by his manager on YouTube, apparently after his mom uploaded videos of his performances so his loved ones could see them.

According to What the Trend, Justin Bieber is popular right now because, he "has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him," and his new album was just released. It has to be more than that though. Bieber has frequently been a trending topic for over a month straight. The tweets just keep pouring in, and they're generally not spammy.

The week of Valentine's Day, What the Trend said, "the young Canadian R&B/pop singer has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him! He is trending these days because his solo begins the new version of We Are the World, a song for the relief efforts in Haiti."

The next week, it was attributed to the same thing. The week after that, it was: "the young Canadian R&B/pop singer is trending these days because his new song, ‘Never Let You Go’ was released for download on iTunes this week, as well as a duet with Sean Kingston, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. He also had his birthday March 1st."

Last week, it was: "Justin Bieber's new album My World 2.0 comes out on March 23rd & his fans are excited. He also appeared on Z100.com, QVC, and GMTV in the UK."

(Hat tip to Mashable for keeping an archive of top ten tweets each week).

"It's pretty crazy to think about and just to have all the fans' support," Bieber said of his Twitter status in a recent interview. "Everything's just been wonderful."

So, Bieber has had a busy month. Still, the sheer domination over trending topics that has grown from these happenings has been quite remarkable. Have the Twitter stars just aligned for Bieber or is it all part of the marketing? Either way, perhaps there are lessons here that marketers could take away from Bieber's spark of Twitter interest.

It's tough for a brand to achieve the fandom of a teen idol (though the good news for brands is that they probably have a better shot at their own fandom lasting for the long run, as teen idols for the most part come and go, despite a few exceptions). Twitter is about what's happening right now, though, and pop culture is ALWAYS happening right now.

Lessons to Learn from Justin Bieber

1. A stream of Justin Beiber Twitter mentions appears on the Justin Beiber site. Any site can do this, and it helps promote your Twitter presence. However, use caution, because you can't control what people are saying about you. If you're ok with that openness, let it show, but if you take care of your customers, chances are they won't have much negative to say about you anyway.

2. Stay relevant to pop culture. Does that mean go and crank out a bunch of Justin Beiber articles? No, but it may help to show that you are "hip" to what's going on in some capacity.

3. Perhaps it is hasty to assume, but in this case, I'm fairly comfortable with going out on a limb and assuming that a good percentage of Bieber's fan-base is made up of young people. If there's any truth to that, it would appear to mean that Twitter is being more widely adopted by younger generations than previously thought. This could be helpful to keep in mind when considering your potential Twitter audience.

4. Stay relevant not only to pop culture, but to customers. Much of Bieber's Twitter popularity has been attributed to the various things he has been working on - appearances in songs, TV performances, new singles, an upcoming album, etc. He's doing things that his fans find interesting and worth tweeting about. Do things that your fans find interesting, and they will hopefully tweet about it.

Is it ok to say no to Twitter? Sure, but you can't deny the potential reach the service allows you, and this is only growing. A year from now, Twitter is likely going to be even more useful to businesses in a variety of capacities. They're expected to have an ad platform, for one. Last week, they announced the @anywhere platform.

Don't expect to get Justin Bieber-like fandom, but I'd wager that many businesses would consider a fraction of that to be a successful Twitter endeavor. By the way, a recent study found that brands on Facebook and Twitter are favored by consumers.

Why do you think Justin Bieber has dominated Twitter's trending topics so much more than other celebrities and topics? Discuss here.

Read more here

Internet Marketing Tools: Web Analytics Service

CrazyEgg offers a colorful twist on your small business Web site traffic. Plus, a site for downloading free books and a nifty stopwatch with loads of features.

Read more here

Carcieri signs $60M loan-guarantee law

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri signed a law Tuesday that increases to $60 million the amount of loan guarantees available for businesses through the R.I. Industrial Recreational Building Authority.

Read more here

Marketing Strategies: Commit to Customer Service

This week Andrew Lock's small business marketing tips include the power and simplicity of customer service, a free outsourcing tool and an update on GotBiz.TV (hint: it's no joke).

Read more here