Internet Marketing Course BLOG

Part of the 999 Internet Marketing Tips Series

By Dave Ingalls
January 1, 2011

Internet Marketing Tip #5: If you have NOT installed “Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer” on your computer, STOP EVERYTHING AND DO IT IMMEDIATELY.

Oh Oh! That’s two “Stop Everything and Do It Immediately” Internet Marketing Tips in a row! What’s going on?

Why do you need to download/install this application? Because Version 6 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser (“IE6″) will just not die!

Even though Microsoft has discontinued support for IE6 and introduced much improved IE versions 7, 8 and 9, IE6 continues to be used, mainly by some of the largest corporations in the US!

Why is this important? Because IE6 does NOT properly display Web sites using the latest Web site architecture (Divs and cascading style sheets) while the newer IE versions and all other popular browsers (FireFox, Safari, Google Chrome, etc.) do display these Web sites as intended.

So if you’re building your own Web site, you better have a way to “see” how that site is being displayed in IE6.

I just found out about this Microsoft application because the IE6 monster reared its ugly head on one of my recent Web site re-designs.

The Web site is for a community youth basketball league, so I thought IE6 would NOT be a problem because the overwhelming number of site visitors would be using home computers that no longer had IE6 installed on them. Wrong!

» Continue reading “Internet Marketing Tip – Install Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview”

“Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”

By Dave Ingalls
B2B Internet Marketing Consultant
April 21, 2010

“Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”, by HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah is THE seminal book on how to use the new concept of “inbound marketing” instead of the classic outbound or “interruption” marketing model to succeed in your online marketing efforts.

In fact, as far as I can tell, Halligan and Shah basically invented the term “Inbound Marketing” when they opened the doors at HubSpot, a marketing software company that helps businesses “get found”, and have now formalized the concept with the release of this book.

Even though the book is a quick read (a little over 200 pages), you’ll find yourself re-reading and “dog-earing” many of the pages!  It’s stuffed with incredible insights and useful tips on how to put those insights to work in your online marketing program today.

I won’t bore you with a section-by-section review of this very useful book. I’ll just leave you with this thought: the next time you buy something, anything really, think about the trusted sources you used to help you make that buying decision, and where YOU found those trusted sources. I’ll bet most if not all of those sources had some online aspect to them, and here’s the KEY point, I’ll bet YOU found them and not the other way around.

My advice – Buy this book Now! Here’s a link to the book on Amazon:

Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

Link to My Internet Marketing Course

Link to My Internet Marketing Consultant Info

Internet Marketing Course Blog
Dave Ingalls
July 28, 2009

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): This IMC Blog entry is a bit different. I’m going to help readers who use Joomla and/or WordPress find out if they’ve got any Internet Explorer 6.0 (“IE6″) display issues with either their Joomla Web site templates and/or WordPress blogging themes. If they do, I also outline how they can get a head start on fixing those problems by looking “under the hood” of these 2 very popular Web applications. Why am I doing this? Because I just went thru this situation myself and I thought I’d spare my readers some of the pain I went thru finding a solution!

According to Market Solutions, 2009 YTD IE6 usage still stands at 18% of all Internet browsers. IE7 (42%) and IE8 (6% and climbing rapidly) are both taking share from IE6, but at this writing, IE6 is still the THIRD most popular Web browser in terms of usage.

So why worry about high IE6 usage by Web surfers? Because IE6 is NOT the same as IE7 or IE8. Without getting into the details, let’s just say that IE7 and IE8, along with all popular versions of the Firefox Web browser, know how to correctly interpret and display the latest underlying HTML, CSS and XHTML code that most popular Joomla! (content management system) Web site templates and WordPress (blogging software) blog themes use. IE6, however, was developed before these new browser software standards were adopted by all browser manufacturers. And with almost 20% of Web browser usage, IE6 can make your Web sites and blogs look more like a Picasso painting (no offense to the master) than the beautiful sites/blogs you see in standards compliant browsers to 1 in 5 Web surfers! Not a good situation!

What did I do about this potential problem and why did I care? Because this Internet Marketing Course Blog uses WordPress and my Internet Marketing Course Web site uses Joomla!

Here’s what I ended up doing after much surfing and trial/error.

» Continue reading “IE6 Problems-How to See Them-How to Fix Them”

By Rick Burnes
HubSpot Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
April 22, 2009

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): Great advice about how small businesses can generate content consistently AND painlessly. Another idea from the B2B world – if you distribute your product or service thru a distribution network, you may find that one or more of your distributors have blogs and have blogged about a successful application of your company’s products to solve one of their customer’s problems. “Steal” the blog content for your blog – if you tell that distributor what you’re up to, they’ll LOVE the extra mileage you give their content! A classic Win-Win!

“If you’re a small business owner or a professional marketer getting started with inbound marketing, you’re probably worried about content.

You understand that content is the best way to win the SEO lottery and get found on the web — but you’re worried that producing all that content will be hard. You and your staff (if you have one!) weren’t trained as professional writers and the prospect of regular blog responsibilities is daunting.

I don’t blame you. I worked in the news business for seven years before joining HubSpot, and the prospect of producing new, original content everyday is overwhelming to me, too.

Here’s a secret: Writing a useful, popular blog doesn’t require that you come up with spellbinding new ideas every day. You should be able to create useful content from things you’re already doing on a regular basis.

To do this, you need to be in a content mindset. Instead of trying to come up with ideas when you sit down to write blog posts, look for posts throughout the day.

Here are five more specific ways you can do this:”

Read the entire article online by clicking on the following link:

Does Your Company Have the Content Mindset?

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

Link to My Internet Marketing Course

Link to My Internet Marketing Consultant Info

by Rick Burnes
Hubspot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
November 18, 2008

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): What an insightful and helpful article! Rick Burnes does a masterful job of integrating the next round of Internet Marketing initiatives and showing how they can form the basis of a comprehensive online “Inbound Marketing” strategy. The comparison of Inbound Marketing tools to “Outbound Marketing” tools is spot-on. An excerpt with one of the charts from this blog entry is given below. I suggest you STOP whatever you’re doing, take 10 minutes and read the entire article (link below). You will not be disappointed!

“What Is Inbound Marketing?”

“Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.

In traditional marketing (outbound marketing) companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam and trade shows.

Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It’s still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.

Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing on its head.

Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.

Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.”

Read the entire article by clicking on this link:

“Inbound marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web”

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

Link to: Internet Marketing Course