The Evolving Internet Marketer

From a Blog to a Book

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a couple of posts about how, by writing a blog, you could very well end up with a book. Well here’s a link to a recent BusinessWeek article that talks about how one of our soldiers in Iraq began a blog and ended up with a book. They use the term ‘blook’ to describe these book to blog efforts (a term attributed to Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com). Blooks-what an ugly, imho, term-are making quite the splash in publishing circles. So whether you’re looking to boost your credibility and give yourself a product to sell off your website or hope to be discovered by a big name publishing house, start blogging. Stay focused. Develop a strategy. Think of categories as chapters and good luck. Oh, and send me a Starbucks card when you sign your first book contract. One can never be too caffineated!

Prevent Email List Erosion; Pay Attention to Out of Office Auto Replies

Whenever you broadcast an ezine or email promotion you will invariably get a 2-5% response consisting of “Out of Office”-type auto replies. You may be tempted to ignore these, particularly if you have several dozen or hundred to process. My advice; don’t. Assign a staffer or set aside some down time to do a quick review. You’ll find that while the majority of these replies are of the I’m on vacation or traveling on business variety, between 10-15% will be I’m no longer at this company, please contact ________ and/or my address has changed please use me@mynewemailaddress.com for future correspondence. Also take a quick peek in your spam folder to make sure that no responses got accidentally routed there. I found 2 from my last broadcast.

Why You Need a Web Site Now

Because I, and a growing number of people like me, might not do business with you otherwise. The internet is the new yellow pages (yp) but where the internet has it hands-down on the yellow pages is that while the yp can give you a title (a single line listing), or deliver a chapter (a display ad), the internet can publish the whole book. Smart business owners of any size get this. Do you?

The Best Dressed Web Site

Colors are key to how we perceive things. Red is associated with strength and leadership but also anger. Green connotes money, richness, nature . . . or envy. Blue is cool, calming or stable but can just as easily be seen as calculating and cold. Color has different meanings across different cultures. White is the color of new beginnings (weddings) in our American culture but the color of endings (funerals) in others.

On the web or in our ezine communications color is a part of that all important first impression we make to our readers and browsers. Much like a beautiful silk tie that really complements a man’s suit or a pair of scuffed loafers that detract from an otherwise impeccable look, our color scheme is a key element of the impression we make…

Choosing the palette you use in representing yourself in any media is important but, if you’re like me, you think that brown socks go quite well with that navy blue suit so here’s a list of sites and tools to help you find that primary color that perfectly describes your enterprise and the complementary colors to match. Have fun. Go nuts. Hmmmm … Day Glo orange goes with ….

References:

ColorBlender.com which allows you to build your own color blends (or palettes) on the fly or generate a random blend.

If you’re looking for inspiration for that primary color, browse on over to Cloford.com to view a listing of over 500 colors. Pick one and plug its provided RGB numbers into the ColorBlender tool to come up with that perfect blend.

And, if you need to convert RBG (RED|GREEN|BLUE) to it’s hexadecimal value for building web pages, you can use this handy conversion chart.

Finally, Colors make the web go ’round – is a Squidoo site that lists several additonal online references.

ENJOY