The following are resources that will help in your exploration of Digital Marketing research. These resources include tools for web site, search, social media and mobile devices. Take some time to examine each one of these resources and put them to good use.
How to Use Internet Market Research Tools, by Inc. Staff
http://www.inc.com/guides/biz_online/online-market-research.html
Types of available digital research tools:
Web site usage and traffic analytics
Alexa http://www.alexa.com
Quantcast http//www.quantcast.com
Compete http://www.compete.com
ComScore http://www.comscore.com
Search tool for analyzing search trends:
Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends
Social Media monitoring tools:
BlogPulsehttp://www.blogpulse.com
TribeVibehttp://www.tribevibe.com/
TweetSentimenthttp://tweetsentiments.com
CrowdEyehttp://www.crowdeye.com
Trendistichttp://trendistic.com/
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
YouTube Insights for Audience: http://www.google.com/videotargeting/ifa/buildQuery
Mobile and digital devices analytics:
Admob http://metrics.admob.com/
Statistics for digital media usage:
Internet World Stats http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Stats Counter http://gs.statcounter.com/
Other Helpful Sources:
Pew Internet and American Life Project http://pewinternet.org/
eMarketer http://www.emarketer.com/
Marketing Charts http://www.marketingcharts.com/
DigitalBuzz Blog http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com
Research Brief from the Center of Media Research
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Archives.showArchive&art_ty…
Tools for Online Focus Groups & Surveys:
Ask Your Target Market
http://askyourtargetmarket.com/
TWTpoll
http://twtpoll.com/
TwittPoll
http://twittpoll.com/
Survey Monkey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/
Survey Gizmo
http://www.surveygizmo.com/
Survey Gizmo Facebook App
http://www.surveygizmo.com/facebook-survey-app/
Survey Gizmo Using Facebook to Get Targeted Respondents
http://www.surveygizmo.com/survey-blog/facebook-survey-respondents/
Zoomerang
http://www.zoomerang.com/
This great resource is from Dita Dau, Regis University.
Social Media/ Network Marketing
• www.Namechk.com
• www.Hootsuite.com
• http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com (The 5 Pillars of a Social Media
Campaign)
• http://mashable.com
• http://ping.fm – free service that allows you to track and update
multiple social networking sites simultaneously (i.e., posting a
status to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all at the same time)
• www.mixergy.com Interviews with many cutting edge people in the tech
and biz world.
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Best Practices for Writing Content for SEO
• http://ezinearticles.com/?Copywriting-Services—Best-Practices-For-S…
• http://www.theorganicseo.com/
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Social Networking for B2B
• http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2010/3695/linkedin-delivers-b2b-…
– Article about which B2B social networking sites get the most click-
through website visitors and which of their website links are visited
from which social media venues.
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Photo Editing
• www.picnik.com – free source for editing photos – very easy & fast.
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Twitter
• http://hootsuite.com/dashboard — a place to manage all your social
media, but especially improves on the basic Twitter dashboard
• http://www.screentweet.com/ – shares videos, pictures, screen shots,
and images on Twitter
• http://www.tweetdeck.com/ – Another Twitter dashboard to manage all
your social media- Twitter, Facebook, Linkin, Foursquare, and others.
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Facebook
• www.facebook.com/username – Once you have 25 fan page “likes” you
can change your vanity code. Need to login first in order to activate.
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LinkedIn
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YouTube – Viral Marketing
• Social Media Revolution http://youtu.be/sIFYPQjYhv8
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RSS Feeds – Content
• Google Reader: http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlereader/tour.html
• http://www.google.com/ig?hl=en
• http://netvibes.com – Another rss reader, similar to google reader,
that allows you to change your theme or personalize your reading
options.
• http://www.smminstitute.com/blog/2010/6/2/writing-your-first-blog-you…
– Article about blogging rather than rss feed, but still helpful in
developing content
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SEO/Google
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starte…
• http://services.google.com/breeze/webmasters/googleforwebmasters/
• http://www.google.com/analytics/tour.html
• http://www.seocentro.com/tools/seo-tools.html.
• www.google.com/sktools
• http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
• www.Seomoz.org
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Interactive web design, art / design side of the business, look and
feel, usability architecture, site mapping, layout structure, color
schemes, and common trends in user behavior and navigation
• http://www.gimp.org/ – Free image editing software
• http://www.mobileawesomeness.com/ – Cool Mobile Sites
• F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
• http://www.bigbangtemplates.com – free source for
website templates.
• http://www.getfirebug.com – One of the most popular and most
popular web development tool. Checks speed and suggests tweaks for web
optimization.
• http://www.wordpress.com – One of the best web design tools online.
You can change the look of the page and download various plugins.
• http://blog.atlas-advertising.com/?p=1214 – Article about 10 vital
principles for web design
• http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm – All about Eye
tracking theory
• http://www.alistapart.com/ – explores the design, development, and
meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best
practices.
• http://960.gs/ – Grid System templates in Fireworks, Flash,
InDesign, GIMP, Inkscape, Illustrator, OmniGraffle, Photoshop, Visio,
Exp. Design to help streamline web development and layout workflow.
• http://www.uxbooth.com/ – great resource of articles on usability,
user experience, and interaction design.
• www.mikogo.com FREE version of software like “GoToMeeting” makes it
easy to help customers complete forms or use other complicated parts
of websites
• www.vchecksolutions.com Software allows clients to send a check to
your business online, without having to handwrite and mail
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Website Building
• www.joomla.org
• Absolute Beginners Guide to Joomla! http://docs.joomla.org/Beginners
• www.Sites.google.com — $10/year for a basic, no-frills website.
Free for a website with URL like http://sites.google.com/YourURLhere
• Basic HTML: http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
• Basic SQL: http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp
• JAVA script codes: http://www.javascriptfreecode.com
• www.drupal.org – freeware web design software, very highly used
today
• www.Shopify.com – is a quick and easy way to turn your website into
a usable store for people to purchase things and includes a mobile
technology… if you want to sell a product, go here
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Creating an XML sitemap
• http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
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Trends
• http://trendwatching.com/
• http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/519
• http://techcrunch.com
• http://www.clickz.com
• http://marketing.alltop.com/
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Pay Per Click
• http://adwords.google.com
• http://www.ppchero.com
• Parallel Path – PPC/SEO consultants in Boulder – http://www.parallelpath.com
• https://adcenter.microsoft.com/
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Ad Networks and Ad Servers
• Double Click – http://adwords.google.com – The world’s top
marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in
ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help
them make the most of the digital medium.
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Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) software
• www.Hubspot.com
• http://www.salesforce.com
• http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm
• http://saleslogics.com/
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Hosting and Domain
• http://www.apthost.com/
• http://www.whois.com/
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Entrepreneurship Resources
Website templates
• www.gavick.com Template club for Joomla Templates.
• www.AVC.com
Online Start-up Resources
• http://startuprockstars.com – provides entrepreneurial organizations
the vehicle to hone their presentation and pitching of their product
or service, including events to allow sharing & networking within the
entrepreneurial community.
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Further Reading
• What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis – how to think like the most
successful internet company
• Waiting For Your Cat to Bark by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg – how
marketing is different now
• Permission Marketing by Seth Godin – getting permission to send your
customers advertising
• Seth’s Blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/ — the blog of
the aforementioned author
• Trada http://trada.com/blog/ — Pay-Per-Click experts
• The Outsourcing Company- http://www.theoutsourcingcompany.com/ —
Social media marketing
• Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff – social media 101 and
how to make useful
• The Four Hour Workweek – Tim Ferriss – outsourcing your life
(includes web design, seo, etc)
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Selling Ad Space
• http://www.workz.com/content/view_content.html?section_id=515 – info
on selling ad space on your website directly
• http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html — Google
AdSense, for selling ads on your site