With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don't Need to Sell

The introduction of e-readers such as the Kindle to the world has revolutionized the publishing industry. The question of ways to encourage growth in this industry have been challenging to answer and publishers continue to disagree on what are the best ways to resolve this problem. One solution that has been effective is allowing users to download free e-books from emerging authors.

View my assessment of this strategy at my blog: http://antkegremi.blogspot.com

E-Marketing Class: "Power I" Helps Online Advertisers Stay Ahead of Looming Legislation

The issue of privacy may be the most prominent battlefield in the ongoing e-marketing war that pits government legislation against industry self-regulation. As a recent article in Advertising Age magazine explains, some e-marketing strategists have adopted new technologies to not only fend off government regulation of internet data collection, but to give individual internet users more control of how their data are being used by companies that advertise on the internet. Last month, a company called Better Advertising launched a trial of its “Power I” (Eye) system. Used by several Fortune 500 companies like AT&T, American Express, and Microsoft, the “Power I” system places an icon in the corner of every internet ad that, when clicked, brings up a window with more information about the ad, information on the company that placed the ad, and most importantly, a method for the internet user to opt-out of specific interest-based advertising providers. Not only does Better Advertising believe that its new system gives consumers access to clear information and choices, but it also believes that it provides evidence of ongoing compliance with new industry self-regulatory guidelines. Why should e-marketing strategists be interested in self-regulation? Read my e-marketing class blog to find out what Washington may have in store for online advertisers.

Does Facebook “Like” you too much?

By: Antkeg Remi

When Facebook was first created, it was a great resource to reconnect with old friends, display family photos for distant relatives and to let everyone know where you’ll be this weekend. As it evolved and users began voluntarily posting more information about their likes and dislikes into their profiles, Facebook quickly realized that they struck marketing gold.

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For FarmVille, a Crop From a Real Organic Farm

In the article For Farmville Players, a Crop From a Real Organic Farm, Elizabeth Olsen discusses the Facebook game Farmville's popularity and their first branded in-game crop integration to offer users something that will benefit them online and offline.

What is Farmville? According to Wikipedia, Farmville is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social-networking website Facebook and as an App on the Apple iPhone. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops and trees, and raising livestock. Since its launch in June 2009, FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook, with over 82.4 million active users and over 23.9 million Facebook application fans in May 2010. The total FarmVille users are over 20% of the users of Facebook. Users of Farmville can play for free, but they also can spend real money to buy virtual goods that enable them to expand their farms.

To read more, please visit my blog http://ashleya-emarketing-class.blogspot.com/

Shopping Cart Applications on Facebook...too much or just right?

In the Wall Street Journal Article "Merchants Push Sales Through Social Media; Early Adopters Add Shopping-Cart Apps to Fan Pages to Sell Items, Services" by Sarah Needleman details how merchants are using their Facebook and MySpace pages to attract purchases through offering sales and services to their fans. Fans will be able to see items for sale on the social media pages and then be directed to the company's website to purchase the items. This increases traffic for the company's main website, as well as gives incentives for people to become fans of different company's pages to receive special deals. Though sales through social media seem to be a great idea for many companies, it is more effective for company's who already have a large fan base. For companies who don't have many fans, they would have to combine marketing for their page and their sales as well to see any true profits. As seen with the article the company, Guitar Syndicate has seen an increase of 17% since their online social media sales offering has been offered, but in the same instance Sun & Ski Sports has only seen social media sales offering 1% to their online sales. There also is a fee for adding shopping cart applications, starting at $24.99 but with the possibility to increase if more items are being offered for sale. This is new territory that is being incorporated with social media sites and it is intriguing to see how consumers are and will react to it.

Adding shopping cart applications to social media sites is an intriguing topic because it seems to be one of the few untapped markets within social media. Now with it being offered by companies, there can be a mixture of excitement and also wary. Companies can be willing to add the applications since it can mean more traffic onto their actual website, as well as their social media page. But, as noted before, companies have to make sure that they already have enough fans to be profitable. Therefore, adding a shopping cart application could mean increased marketing henceforth increased costs the companies have to face. There is also the fee of adding a shopping cart application as well as Face book stating that they are going to have a 30% share of sales for various virtual goods. Companies, especially ones on a smaller scale, are going to have to weigh the pro and cons of adding this application. It could lead to greater online sales and fan traffic on their pages, but it could also mean financial headaches...

To see the full write up please visit http://kayz-coffeespoons.blogspot.com

Did Twitter Cost McChrystal His Command?

General Stanley McChrystal possessed two masters degrees, attended three different military schools, earned 13 prestigious badges and served in three wars overseas yet he faced his greatest enemy of all was that of Twitter4 . What started off as nonchalant remarks that carelessly rolled off the tongue of McChrystal with a Rolling Stones reporter in earshot, quickly ignited a firestorm of seismic proportions on Twitter. “It was the article from Michael Hastings that broke the story, but it was Twitter who got the story rolling”.



For more information on this story and additional e-marketing topics, visit my blog at: http://emarketingcanisius.blogspot.com/

Monitoring the electronic grapevine with Twitter

On June 30, 2009, I signed up for a Twitter account. At 11:59 a.m., I posted my first and only “tweet”: “trying to figure out why so many people waste their time on twitter.” It was a serious posting, because I didn’t really understand why someone would want to know that I’m currently making a sandwich, putting gas in my car, or going #2. I had heard that businesses were using it and I could see how that could be useful to advertise a sale or give updates on a new product launch, but for the average user it just seemed to be a waste of time.

What I didn’t think of at that time was the way in which businesses could use Twitter for a much more useful purpose. While researching the business uses of Twitter for our e-marketingclass, I discovered that it has a search function that can instantly scan millions of tweets for their company names, product keywords and industry lingo. With limited effort and expense, a business can now see what is being said about them in real-time. With this feature, Twitter is suddenly useful for more than cyber-stalking celebrities like ashton kutcher and Antkeg Remi.


To continue reading this article, please visit my personal e-marketingclass blog and Antkeg Remi information site...