breebop.comOdds & sods that interest me

Added to my Delicious bookmarks between August 31st through September 1st:

• HOW TO: Answer Tough Kid Questions – Whether you have children of your own, or simply look after or spend time with them, you’re very likely to find yourself in a situation where you’re stumped by the questions that they throw at you at any given time, and on any given subject matter. You probably know the answer, but do you know a child-appropriate answer for those extra tough questions? Whyzz does, and they can help quell those inquisitive minds with suitable answers for children whether you’re at home or on the go.
• apophenia: Teens Don't Tweet… Or Do They? – The most salient visceral reaction that I got when looking at the teens' Twitter streams was that teens on Twitter seemed to fit into three categories: 1) geeky teens, tech teens, fandom teens, machinema teens; 2) teens who are in love with the Jonas Brothers/Miley Cyrus, musicians, or another category of celebs; 3) multi-lingual foreign teens with friends/followers around the world who seemed to participate in lots of online communities.

  While I can't make any meaningful conclusions until I spend more time with the data, it seems to me that the teens on Twitter – or at least the teens responding to the trending topic – are not representative of teens as a whole. That's not a bad thing. They're geeks and passionate creators and trendsetters and pop culture addicts. I don't get the sense that they're dragging their friends into Twitter, but rather, focusing on using Twitter to engage with other people who share their interests or people that they admire.

• Seth's Blog: On becoming a household name – Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they've heard of.

  It turns out that this is an overlooked benefit of banner ads. Banner ads are fairly worthless in terms of generating clickthroughs… you have to trick too much and manipulate too much to get clicks worth much of anything. But, if you build ads with no intent of clicks, no hope for clicks… then you can focus on ads that drill your name or picture or phrase into my head. 100 impressions and you're almost famous.

  A household name. Not for everyone, but for people who matter.

• Neuromarketing » Collecting Visitor Info: Reward vs. Reciprocity – Most users confronted with a form won’t complete it. If they arrived at the site looking for some specific information, they will likely hit the back button and see if they can access it without the aggravation of form completion and without the risk of getting spammed later.

  It turns out that a reciprocity strategy works better – give them the info they want, and then ask for their information. In the impressively titled Embedded Persuasive Strategies to Obtain Visitors’ Data: Comparing Reward and Reciprocity in an Amateur, Knowledge-Based Website, Gamberini et al found that twice as many visitors gave up their information if they were able to access the information first. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but even though these visitors were under no obligation to complete the form, they converted at double the rate of visitors seeing the “mandatory” form.

• Official Google Docs Blog: Use Google Docs & Google Checkout to Sell Online – The Google Checkout store gadget — a new offering just released to Google Labs — allows anyone to create an online store using a Google spreadsheet.
• Social Network Marketing Expands Sphere – eMarketer – according to Anderson Analytics’ May 2009 survey—52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social networking Website—double the percentage who had said something negative (23%).