Friday 29 March 2013

15 Legendary Marketing Fails

15 Legendary Marketing Fails

marketing fails double face palm
These marketing fails deserve a double facepalm
Back by popular demand we have rounded up the best of the worst marketing fails.
If you haven’t already, check out this past ‘epic marketing fail’ post for some entertainment. We also post a weekly marketing fail to our Facebook page every Monday to start your week off with a smile.
15 Epic Marketing Fails
Today’s categories:
  • Genius or Fail? When marketing fails are so horrible, you wonder if marketers did it on purpose. And if they did, does the phrase “Any publicity is good publicity” really ring true?
  • Grammar & Spelling Fails. I am no Grammar Nazi, but when something is representing your brand or marketing your product, please, please remember to double check your work.
  • Ad Placement Fails: When one ad meets another and causes chaos. When Marketers pay good money and then editors screw it up.
  • Miscellaneous Marketing Fails: These can’t be categorized – except maybe with the word WRONG.

Genius or Fail?

She takes a what, where?

These marketers clearly did this on purpose. Pro: They got people talking about their ad. Con: They compared their product to “sheet.” So is it a fail? Or did they succeed in making this ad go viral?

Marketing FaiI take a sheet in the pool

Come a little closer

What do you think, marketing genius or marketing faux pas? Are these marketers going a little too far?
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Marketing Fail Funeral Services

#susanalbumparty

So Susan Boyle’s Album Release Twitter HashTag was one big mistake…but hey, publicity is publicity, right?
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Marketing Fail Susan Boyle

Grammar & Spelling fails

Apostrophe please

What is the spelling on the actual cake going to be?
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Marketing Fail Cakes For All Occasions

Free Joining Fee

Loves me a free fee? Wait, what? I have to pay?
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Marketing Fail Free Joining Fee

Ad Placement Fails

Shameless Tricks

Shameless Tricks? Well, Mr. Editor-in-Chief, you should be ashamed. Please make sure you look at BOTH sides of the fold before you approve the magazine for print.
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Marketing Fail Ad Placement Fail

QR Code Fail

Of course I will climb down onto the track and step over the railing to launch my QR Code scanner. Let me get right on that… Death wish anyone?
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Marketing Fail third rail QR Code

Laughing so hard right now

Laughing at you. Not with you.
Dear Editor-in-Chief, Please remember where you place an ad is just as important as the ad itself. Sincerely, Marketers everywhere
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Marketing Fail Placement

Father’s Day Fail

This really makes you want to “treat him.”
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Marketing Fail Fathers Day

Miscellaneous Marketing Fails

Strong Call-to-Action

This call to action was so strong, someone took it to heart.
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Marketing Fail If It Ain't Broke Break It

I Spy With My Little Eye…

Aan advertising executive clearing their desk
We’re putting the ball in your court. What exactly is wrong with this ad?
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Marketing Fail Nicolas Cage

Today is the Day…

We fire the marketing team. Please, remember your audience.
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Marketing Fail Today Is The Day We Take The Stairs

Celebrity Endorsement Fail

Common Oprah. I had higher expectations coming from you.
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Marketing Fail Twitter for iPad

Sexual Innuendo Fail

Hmmm. Not sure if this is an ad for a touchless faucet or…
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Marketing Fail The Moment Your Forearm Has Been Waiting For

Racist Fail

Word on the street is that this may be fake. But still.
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Marketing Fail Racist



About The Author

Photo of Stefanie Grieser

Stefanie is a recent entrepreneurship graduate from the University of Victoria who is passionate about marketing strategy, integrated marketing communications and social media. Having worked in the marketing departments of some of the largest companies in Canada, she decided new school marketing for a startup was more her style.
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30 Things You Should Not Share on Social Media


30 Things You Should  Not Share on Social Media

  1. What chicken you are plucking or cow you’re milking on Farmville on Facebook
  2. How many you have killed on Mafia wars or where they are buried.. again on Facebook
  3. Party photos showing you inebriated or a hand placed where it shouldn’t be
  4. That you are having a party.. you might get more guests than you counted on
  5. Photos  revealing  you flirting with the bosses wife at the annual work Christmas party
  6. That you are having an affair
  7. That you are thinking of having an affair
  8. Complaints about your boss
  9. That you hate your job and want to leave.. you might get your wish.. involuntarily
  10. Don’t share photos or an event that reveals that you were not sick that day at work
  11. That are you are planning to take a sickie
  12. Drama with your friends
  13. Issues with your parents
  14. Passwords.. unless you have more money than brains
  15. Hints about passwords like dogs names
  16. Images and videos of your children
  17. Updates on Facebook after you have escaped from Jail and on the run (don’t laugh it has happened)
  18. Revealing your thoughts about a court case… when on jury duty
  19. Don’t link personal sites to professional business sites like LinkedIn.. don’t mix business with pleasure
  20. Financial information such as how much money you do or don’t have in your bank account
  21. Personal Information
  22. How to get more friends or followers.. it already sounds like a scam
  23. You are leaving on a holiday
  24. The dates you are away on your holiday
  25. Your daily schedule.. burglars have been known to use these little hints to their advantage
  26. Showing you doing something stupid .. not good for personal branding
  27. Your bodily functions
  28. Revealing extreme views on Race, Religion or politics
  29. What you had for breakfast
  30. Finally, If you are not comfortable about it … don’t share it

Written by  

10 Quick Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Blog


So you’ve got a website or a blog…great. You are already one step ahead of millions of others who don’t even get to that stage (i’m not even kidding).
The biggest misconception out there is that by simply putting up a new blog or website that you will suddenly get bucket loads of traffic and visits quickly. I won’t beat around the bush on this point – that’s not how it works.
Having a blog is a great way to improve your online presence for both business and also personal reasons. You can build a blog for free using tools such as WordPress, Blogger and Typepad and begin posting content right away. However, if nobody is reading that content that you spent ages creating, then what’s the point of it all?
I hear people saying things like “blogging doesn’t work” all the time. It turns out that they tried blogging for a few weeks, published a few random blog posts and then expected the traffic to pile in. No wonder blogging didn’t work for them! My advice, which is hardly rocket science, is that you must treat your blog/website almost as a business in itself: you need to put the time and effort in and treat it seriously to make a success of it.
Here are ten things you need to be aware of when blogging for business:

1.    Fresh Content

Have you ever been to a website that said ‘last updated 1997′ or ‘last updated 254 days ago’? What impression does that give the reader? Nobody wants to visit a blog to see the same content all the time. Update your website and blog content at an asbolute minimum of twice a week to keep your content very fresh and current. Your content can be things like industry news, tips, advice, warnings, an update on your work/projects, feedback received from clients..etc.
It’s perfectly fine to write content and upload it to your website/blog and set it up to publish every few days. This way, you do all the hard work at the beginning and put your updates on auto-pilot whilst you research more ways of improving your blog.

2.    Article Marketing*

This is where you write articles not only for your blog content but also to distribute to article submission websites. You can usually put a link back to your website or blog within your article (usually in the author’s bio box). Article marketing is a great way of putting yourself “out there” as the authority and go-to person for your expertise area.
There are thousands of article submission websites that you can use to distribute your articles, but to start with i’d recommend Ezinearticles.com
*The same applies for Video Marketing

3.    Social Networking

The buzz word for the past few years. Incase you’ve been living under a rock recently this includes Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, LinkedIn, MySpace etc. Social networks are great to find like minded people who you know would be interested in your content. It’s very easy to target the demographic of your ideal blog reader using different social networks and by connecting with those people and sharing your thoughts you can easily gather quite a following.
It’s also very easy to link your blog to all your social networking profiles, so that when you update your blog all the other profiles get updated too.

4.    Viral Marketing

Ever seen one of those videos that everyone is talking about? Viral marketing is when your content (article/video/audio etc) is passed on from one person to their friends & contacts to see. Then those people will tell their friends about it, and so on. Before you know it, hundreds or thousands (sometimes millions!) of people have seen your content.
A good way of making your content viral is by discussing topical issues or adding some controversy into your message – it’s sneaky, but so what!

5.    Use RSS Feeds

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The visitors and readers of your blog can ‘subscribe’ to your RSS feed and get an email update whenever new content is posted on your blog. It is an easy way for your readers to keep up with your blog without having to actually go to your blog. RSS feeds can also be used to update other sites and social networks.

6.    Submit Your Blog to Search Engines

By manually submitting your blog to search engines helps your website/blog to be indexed and get ranked. Google and Yahoo! are the most popular search engines you want to ‘crawl’ your blog pages. Manually submitted your URL does not guarantee top ranking or indexing…there’s much more you can do to get your blog indexed quickly.

7.    Joining Forums

Relevant forums are full of your target readers. You are marketing yourself to find traffic to your website because people are interested in what you have to say. Become a member of a relevant forum for your industry connect with new people and share ideas. You can add a link to your blog in the signature line so others can click on it and read & subscribe to your blog.

8.    Visit other blogs

If someone comments on any of your blogposts, show your appreciation by also posting comments on their blogs. This helps form relationships with other bloggers. Also, you can add a link back to your own blog when commenting on someone elses!

9.    SEO Marketing

SEO is an entire industry in itself but a quick word on it here. Do ensure you use your relevant keywords in your content to attract the search engines. Getting a keyword density (ratio of keyword text to all text) between three and ten percent is recommended by most schools of thought (although this can totally depend based on what your competitors are doing on their sites). Don’t forget to do your keyword research first though – it’s pointless doing SEO for a keyword that nobody is searching for!

10.    Social Bookmarking

Not to be confused with social networking. Social bookmarking is when you submit your posts to sites which allows others who are members of those sites to track you back to your blog. For example, sites such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon are social bookmarking sites.

About the Author

Internet Marketer Suraj Sodha is the founder of Internet Marketing Highway. He lives in London, England and runs a number of successful Internet businesses, including this blog. Suraj has consulted for & trained over 400 businesses since 2008, helping them use the Internet to get more clients & more sales.

         

9 Ways to Make Blogging Work for YOU


Here a List of Potential Ways to Make Blogging Work for YOU

1. Do your blogging with important and unique content. You can also narrate and share stories to highlight your knowledge and expertise. Never forget how telling your readers how you deal with potential clients and customers. Let them know the value of what you are offering. And make it easy for them to contact you if they have questions to ask or if they want to avail your services. Its important to “be yourself” and let your personality come through in your blogging efforts, when you do this…your entries will be more personal and entertaining for those who read them.
2. Do your blogging a minimum of two or three times a week. It does not to be very long articles. Short articles are fine as long as the essence and value is there. If your a member of the Six Figure Mentors, you’ll know that they recommend that you BLOG daily. I’ve found this is an effective way to multiply your success. Always keep in mind that you must continue with your blogging each week.
3. Link to other useful resources available on the web. This is very important in order to build traffic expanding your target market. You can research online for topics you can post that is related to your site offering. If possible, put comments on other blogs. Let blog owners know that you are spending time reading about them so they know that you are interested in what they have to say and available to comment. This should always be a part of your blogging efforts.
4. Don’t forget to submit to blog directories and get back-links. If you know how to do this, get the help of someone that is an expert on that field. You can also read some blog tutorials available on many sites. E-books are also offering some tips and techniques on how to go about blogging and back-linking successfully.
5. Keep track of your visitors. You might consider using a counter in your blog so you will see who has been reading your posts. Or, you can use tracking programs and tools available on many hosting platforms for this purpose. This will help you in figuring out the number of people that are coming in and coming back to your blog.
6. Make a list of all your products and services. Check if the landing pages are linked correctly. Nothing can turn off visitors more quickly than having been linked to a site that isn’t in any way related to your blog. If you have a shopping cart, you can use your affiliate links and ad tracking features for easy access.
7. Remember to link to your own website and vice versa. It is better to have a different site dedicated to your blog than having one incorporated to your website. Having it separately increases your chances of getting more and varied types of visitors. Why do your advertising in one when you can do it in multiple ways.
8. Blogging should not be pure “sales talk”. Readers are a lot smarter nowadays. They can sense marketing from afar. When they do, they won’t be interested in continuing to read your blog because they aren’t interested in “being sold.” They encounter marketing everyday so try to do things differently.
9. Be patient. Although there are some blogs that work right away, most take time. Update, update and update but don’t expect instant result to come pouring in. Just sit back and think of other techniques you can use to your make your blogging more successful.
Blogging needs to be seen in the correct light as something that can have a tremendous impact on your business. It can be very useful when you know what you are doing.

Using these techniques (and more) are Great Ways to Make Blogging Work for You Today

This Article was originally posted on Concept MORE! – http://www.conceptmore.com/blog/nine-good-ways-to-make-blogging-work-for-you/

Popular (But Bad) Blogging Advice You Should Ignore


Popular (But Bad) Blogging Advice You Should Ignore

By 

Every blogger I’ve known (including myself) has googled ‘How to grow a blog’ one time or another. Soon after the first post is published, you start thinking about getting traffic and comments, more precisely what you need to do in order to increase both.


(Image Source: Fotolia)
One of the first things a blogger does, when faced with the dilemma of growing his or her blog is research. As you search, you realize that you keep coming across the same advice over and over again – from A-listers and normal bloggers alike.
If so many people are vouching for the same piece of advice, then it must surely work, right?
So you spend the next few months trying one advice after another, hoping it’ll take your blog to greater heights. You’re doing everything that they say will work; the problem is, they don’t! Here’s what won’t work and how you can make it work for you.

Blog Every Day

This was the first blogging advice I took to heart – and failed spectacularly at. Blogging every day is an open invitation to a blogging burn-out. Not only do you run out of things to say but your writing suffers too because you can’t spend as much time proofreading, editing and polishing every post.


(Image Source: bLaugh)
To top it all off, your blog post’s life span is reduced to a single day. That’s not enough time for it to gain traction in social media or get comments. You don’t get any time to market it!
Blogging every day sounds good in theory, but in reality, it squeezes the life and creativity out of you.

How To Make It Work For You

Unless your blog is your business, there’s a good chance new blog posts every day isn’t what your blog needs. Change your goal of blogging every day to blogging regularly. Decide on your blog’s needs. How many posts a week do you really need to attract visitors and keep your blog active?
New blogs tend to do well with 2-3 posts per week. Experiment with posting schedules to see which days get most visits, comments and interaction and target your publications within that optimum space.

Write Great Content

The second piece of blogging advice that you still find famous bloggers imparting proved to be a bit of an oxymoron for me. How could I write great content if I had to blog every day? If you’re blogging every day, your content is going to suffer.
Great content takes time to write. It starts with a killer headline and ends with a powerful call to action. Throw in the content that needs to go between the two, and a mini-quest for the perfect images, and you’re looking at a LOT of time and energy devoted to creating great blog content.

How To Make It Work For You

Writing great content takes planning. Great content not only imparts knowledge but it solves your readers’ problems. It gives them viable solutions.
Take some time to go through your blog analytics. What are the people who are landing on your blog searching for? What answers are they looking for?
I’ve found that the posts I write based on conclusions from my search analytics are the ones that remain evergreen and keep the traffic flowing in.

Be Controversial

That seems to be the advice for anyone looking to make a big splash with their blog. Everyone’s writing the same old stuff so they say be different, take an opposing view, and don’t be afraid to offend a few people.
What it really does is make a fool out of you. Instead of convincing readers of your point of view, controversial posts force them to take sides. What happens if you can’t defend your controversial view and some commentator comes in and convinces readers that you’re wrong? Only write a truly controversial post if you’re confident you can defend your point of view.

How To Make It Work For You

Instead of writing a loud, controversial post, pick an angle that hasn’t been covered. Let’s say you have a freelancing blog. Every other freelancing blog out there is telling you not to work for low rates.
No matter what the gurus say or how solid that advice is, freelancers still offer low rates in the beginning. So instead of trying to convince them not to do so, write a blog post about factors to consider when accepting a low-paying client.

Comment Frequently

If you want to make your blog visible, comment on as many blogs as possible – that’s the general consensus. It allows you to leave your footprints all over the blogosphere which trails back to your own blog. While that was true a few years ago, it’s not anymore.


(Image Source: bLaugh)
Blog commenters have gotten busier. They no longer have the time to go over to your website after reading your comments. Most of the time, commenters don’t even read other comments! They leave a comment and get out.

How To Make It Work For You

No one is saying you shouldn’t leave comments. They are a very important part of your blog-growingstrategy. However, comment on relevant blogs and posts, and then monitor which blog is sending you the most traffic.
I still get visitors from a blog I commented in 6 months ago. Here’s a tip: to increase visibility for your comment and your blog, sign your comment with your name and your blog’s name, for e.g. Samar @ myblog.com. This way when people see your comments, they’ll know which blog you’re from.

Run A Competition

I fell for this advice hard – and swore off holding a competition on my blog for a long time afterwards. The fact that you need to grow your blog means you won’t be getting enough traffic to make the competition successful. Besides, competitions require effort on the reader’s part. They won’t make the effort if they don’t know or trust you.

How To Make It Work For You

Instead of holding a competition with a prize at the end, do a give-away instead. Social media is the best way to raise awareness these days, so ask for a simple tweet in exchange. If it’s a free report or a product of your own making, you can also give it away to everyone who tweets or shares it on social media. Create a social share page where they’d be taken to the info product after they share the page on social media.

Reflection

The problem with popular advice is that it’s generic. No two blogs can follow the same advice and get the same results. A lot depends on the blog content and blogger in question. So take the time to understand your blog and business needs before applying any of the advice you hear about blogging. Keep experimenting and tweaking until you find a combination that works.
Have you followed some popular blogging advice only to find that it didn’t work for you?

Samar is a freelance writer, blogger and social media enthusiast. She offers rock-solid tips for freelance writing success on her blog The Writing Base orSamarOwais.com and can be found on Twitter talking about writing, freelancing, productivity (or lack thereof) and travelling at odd hours of the day.

Yahoo has banned its staff from working from home


Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?

When a memo from human resources dropped into the inbox of Yahoo staff banning them from working from home it prompted anger from many of its recipients.
"Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings," the memo said.
"Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home."
The move to get staff back into the office from June this year is thought to have been driven by new chief executive Marissa Mayer, who herself returned to work weeks after giving birth.

Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson, who spends much of his time working on Necker Island in the Caribbean, was quick to respond, calling it a "backwards step in an age when remote working is easier and more effective than ever".
People in the West are constantly bombarded by news about technology that makes it easier to communicate with the office. Many have fast broadband and webcams that allow their faces to appear through the ether at any important meetings. They are surrounded by smartphones, laptops and tablets.
Everything is surely there to free them from the daily commute. Those in manufacturing or retail might always have to be present, but in an age when so many work in offices, why can't they have their office space at home?

What is telecommuting?the increase in the UK, according to the CBI. A total of 59% of employers who responded to a survey in 2011were offering teleworking, up from 13% in 2006.

  • Use of personal computers and phones to enable a person to work from home while maintaining contact with customers or a central office
  • Also known as teleworking, remote working and working from home
  • TUC figures show it's most common among older people, with one in five workers aged over 55 regularly working from home
  • Full-time workers more likely to do it than part-timers, and those with dependent children, says the Work Foundation
  • Number of countries encourage it to help employees' work/life balance
  • But some work five to seven more hours a week at home than if in a regular office setting, a recentUniversity of Texas study shows
There are signs that the number of people working from home is on 
Working from home
In the US, 24% of employed people report working from home at least some hours each week, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
But only 2.5% of the workforce (3.1 million people, not including the self employed or unpaid volunteers) consider home their primary place of work, says the Telework Research Network.
Yahoo is not a lone voice in espousing the virtues of physically being in the office.
Only last week Google's chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said when the company is asked how many people telecommute, their answer is "as few as possible".
"There is something magical about sharing meals," Pichette explained. "There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer 'What do you think of this?'"
Google workers are provided with a free wifi-enabled bus in to the HQ. Mayer, of course, is a former Google executive.
There are obvious reasons why working from home has not proliferated in the way people thought it might. There is still ingrained cultural antipathy.
Designers at Google HQGoogle, like Yahoo, prefers its workers in the office
Not "being seen in the office" may affect a person's chances of promotion, result in a smaller pay rise than office-based peers and lower performance evaluations, according to research by the London Business School and the University of California.
They stress the continuing importance of so-called "passive face time" that is being in the office, regardless of what someone is doing.

The additional pressure not to be perceived as "skiving" may drive those who do work from home to exceed their hours.
Prof Jennifer Glass, co-author of a report on the US workforce published by the University of Texas at Austin, says for many people, especially those in their 30s and 40s, teleworking is part of their work after they have already done 40 hours in the office.
Glass was "flabbergasted" by the Yahoo memo. "This seems to be trying to bring Yahoo in line with corporate America, not high-tech industries," she says.
"The idea that this is going to promote more innovation seems bizarre."
Promoting the value of interactions in hallways and canteen seems strange at a time when face-to-face contact within the office is decreasing.
"I frequently email someone without getting up to see if they are there," Glass notes.
Managers can be biased in favour of those they can actually see working.
"There is this attitude that managers need to see people are close by and that those workers are more productive," says Glass. "It is a natural tendency to want to control things."
Commuters head to work on bikes and on footOne perk of teleworking is no more commuting
This seems outdated to many. "The best employers don't overlook staff because they are not in the office. That strikes me as yesterday's way of working," says Paul Sellers, policy adviser at UK trade union umbrella group the TUC.
Dame Stephanie Shirley, who pioneered home working in the computer industry in the early 1960s, says the concept has not taken off in quite the way many predicted at the time.
"Academics were predicting it would become more acceptable. Town planners were starting to incorporate the idea of home working into their designs. It felt like the beginning of a different kind of society."

When she started her company F International in 1962, the idea of people working from home was alien to most businesses. Offices were highly regimented. Some of the company's programmers did not even have home telephones.
Workers were used to signing in and having their output closely supervised. "It was about the time you were present, rather than what you had achieved," says Dame Stephanie.
By the mid-1980s F International was a pioneer of teleworking employing 800 home workers and turning over nearly £20m a year, and was setting up a national electronic mail network to link workers' home computers to the company's minimal headquarters.
Dame Stephanie said she was on a "crusade" to find skilled work for women who had left the workplace to start families or look after relatives.
But social changes can take longer than expected, says the 75-year-old, who quit the industry in 1993.
Decades later the issue has not gone away. Working from home still has its image problem.
London Mayor Boris Johnson once joked: 'We all know that is basically sitting wondering whether to go down to the fridge to hack off that bit of cheese before checking your emails again."
For Alan Denbigh, co-author of The Teleworking Handbook and former executive director of the Telework Association, there are proven benefits of home working. "It gives you the opportunity to get on with a particular project and for those who are bringing up small families where it is imperative to have a degree of flexibility it works."
Having done both he does not recommend working from home exclusively, recognising the benefits of interacting with people in the office and the pitfalls of working long hours at home to keep up.
But he says it is "equally ridiculous" to feel you have to be at the office every day. He recommends a bit of both.
"A large corporation saying you can't work at home, especially an IT based company, seems counter-productive. You have to treat people as grown-ups."
Additional reporting by Brian Wheeler