The car company Mini has always been awesome at guerilla marketing and doing PR stunts that generate crazy amounts of buzz. Mini recently launched an Internet marketing campaign that shot a little above its direct competition.
Mini issued a racing challenge to none other than Porsche. Why did this generate buzz? Simple – Mini is a relatively cheap car, and Porsche is a racing machine that costs $60,000 more.
![The Power of Local Mobile Search [infographic]](http://www.orangesoda.com/wp-content/uploads/thumbnails/2410.png)
We’ve been really amazed to watch things changing lately. Everything is going mobile and everything is getting more and more localized. Local search is skyrocketing exponentially and we wanted to try to communicate some of the changes that are going on.
Check out our infographic after the bump. Read On
Since the information highway has no end in sight, it is more important than ever to take proactive steps to manage your company’s online reputation. The enormity of the web is a blessing and curse–it gives you the tools to monitor your reputation, but it also gives the same tools to anybody who wants to disparage your business.
Knowing how to use social networks and search engines can help silence unprovoked dissent. Despite the breadth of the internet, only one or two negative pieces of feedback will hurt your company’s image, which scares off prospective customers. Follow a few simple steps to ensure that your business’s online reputation attracts clients and generates revenue.
Have you ever gotten a new customer via a referral? It can feel delightfully effortless to have your best customers essentially do your marketing for you by recommending your business to friends and colleagues.
These personal and professional networks are increasingly moving online. Instead of picking up a phone and calling a dozen people to ask for a recommendation for a hair stylist or a business card printing company, people are surveying their Twitter followers, monitoring which brands their friends “like” on Facebook, and looking for reviews by trusted peers.
Last week I spoke at smcslc and talked about SEO and theming in wordpress. As part of the demonstration I converted a free html template to a wordpress template. I’ve added some bells and whistles and made sure the whole thing is SEO friendly and now present it here for your free downloading pleasure.
You should use this in combination with an SEO plugin like All in one SEO or Platinum SEO Pack.
Here at OrangeSoda, we have a long history of pranks. We love to prank each other which led one of our best PPC Analysts, Dallin Price, into trouble. After pranking someone else Dallin expressed his interest in being involved in the next prank; he then promptly went on vacation for a week.
Who in their right mind would ask to be in on more pranks and then leave town for a week?!
Pics and details after the break.
Read On
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson write the way they build websites. And that’s not a bad thing. They’re the authors of REWORK, the latest book from Chicago-based web application company 37Signals. Written as a series of iterations on iterating, the book expresses the now-famous philosophy of Fried and Hansson in their most readable, well-illustrated way yet. From meetings and work hours to finding funding and picking fights with the competition, this book will surprise you with its blunt witticisms.
An awesome announcement today from the fellas at Topeka has just broken. You can now store ANYTHING in Google docs! What does that mean for the layman? Here are some ideas to get your cogs going:
There are hundreds of uses, but you have to ask yourself, “What’s the catch?”
This sort of service doesn’t come cheap. Topeka is committing highway robbery with this service, charging a whopping $.10 per kilogram.
If you uploaded everything in your home, you’d likely end up spending close to $30. Seriously, who has $30 in this economy?
Topekans Topekanites, if you’re reading this, please price your service for the masses! I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the convenience of having everything I own at my fingertips whenever I’m online is not worth a one-time payment of $30.
I guess this is one more technology that will be reserved for the super rich. Topeka – you’ve let me down.
This has to be the most bizarre branding move I’ver ever seen! In response to Topeka changing their name to Google, Google has now changed it’s name to Topeka! What does this mean to the everday user?
Well, it means that people are going to have to start to change their vocabulary. If someone tells me they “google’d” something I’ll assume they went to Kansas and bought that something an ice cream.
While the official replacement term for Googlers is now going to be Topekans I would prefer it if you called me a Topekanite, which sort of sounds like it might be a pokemon.
In keeping with OrangeSoda’s clever irony, I thought I would poke a little fun at top 10 lists. The truth is, top 10’s used to make great linkbait. After all, who doesn’t want to link to a concise resource that provides great value? It’s getting old, though. It’s been hashed, rehashed, used and abused, and it just doesn’t get you noticed anymore.
Of course, there are high-quality exceptions, but their overall value is declining. For that reason, I wanted to put together this top ten list of the reasons why top 10 lists suck:
10. The credibility associated for writing 10 bullet points probably isn’t going to get you a date
9. You are more likely to get laughed at than lauded for your collection (read: turn off comments)
8. There are so many lists out there, that you have a better shot at creating a ‘Top 37’ list and getting found
7. They give too much credit to David Letterman
6. When done improperly, which most do, they are anti-climatic and don’t leave you with the best reason by the time you make it to #1. In short, you end up wasting your time.
5. Your time could better be spent creating new and innovative content than watching a blinking cursor after the number 5, and realizing that you can’t think up 5 more
4. They show as much innovation on the part of a marketer as is found at the bottom of a lake
3. You might have better luck with a middle- or bottom-10 list
2. They’re getting old and tired. The only person who will still propagate your list is your grandma on Facebook because she thinks they’re new
1. They’re an affront to people who could only think of 9 reasons, and hinder those who were smart enough to think up 11
So there you have it, the top ten reasons why top ten lists suck. I hope I didn’t disappoint. I love to see innovative marketers get deserved attention.
