Social Media

Our social media marketing coverage addresses management tools, educational courses, platform tips, social analytics, and strategies for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. We’ve interviewed merchants who rely on social media traffic, and vendors who provide specialized services.

Social Media
RSS Basics

May 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

Want more traffic to your ecommerce site? Need an easy way to distribute news and updates? An RSS feed may be your answer. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a format for syndicating website content such as might be found on major news sites like CNN, as well as on blogs. ...
Social Media
Email Marketing: Tips for Success

April 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

MAKE THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR LIST YOUR NUMBER ONE GOAL. "If you are serious about wanting to do email professionally, you need to be diligent in how you sign up contacts, using double opt-in techniques. Otherwise, you're building a list that will never perform at maximum levels," says Ji...
Social Media
Bullish on Blogging

March 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

A few years ago the investment firm Merrill Lynch coined the term “We’re Bullish.” It became the company’s corporate mantra of sorts. In stock trade terminology, being bullish represents a rise in value. I’m bullish on blogging, and for a number of reasons. I think it is a technology to...
Social Media
Blogs and Affiliate Marketing

February 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

Blogs have typically not been thought of as direct response sales tools. In their brief history, blogs have morphed from being “personal online journals and diaries” to vital tools for business, but the focus has been more on using them for relational marketing or purely informational p...
Social Media
Successful Blogging: Utilize the Four

January 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

Everyone remembers the three “R’s” from your school days: Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic. These three areas are considered essential to building a good educational foundation. Similarly, there are also some basic essentials to strategic blogging. I would like to present the four “R’s”...
Social Media
eCommerce Marketing: Use Email, Blogs and RSS Together

December 1, 2005 • Paul Chaney

Think of things that just naturally go together and what comes to mind? Peanut butter and jelly for one, ham and cheese for another. How about a hammer and nails or a table and chairs? In terms of online marketing, two strategies go together equally as well: email and blogs. Email is t...
Social Media
Blogs Are One Way to Get Consumers

November 1, 2005 • Paul Chaney

Are you “stuck on style?” If so, you may already be a fan of online retailer’s blog, Flypaper. Those three words describe the audience Bluefly, a discount women’s apparel e-tailer, is attempting to attract via the blog: women who care about fashionable clothing but who do not want to pa...
Social Media
Ten Things to Consider Before You Blog

September 1, 2005 • Paul Chaney

You’ve heard a lot about web logs or blogs. That’s because during the past six years blogs have evolved from a highly personal form of communication on the Internet to a powerful new medium for business. Not since Procter & Gamble invented branding back in 1931 has there been so muc...
Social Media
Blogging: Your Kids Do It, and Your Business Should Too

August 1, 2005 • Paul Chaney

Doubtless, you have heard the term "blog." Bloggers, as they are called, have been credited with bringing down key political and media figures like former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and CBS news anchor Dan Rather. Your teenager might use a blog as a way to chronicle his or her d...