Sites for Writers

I found a great site on the copy blogger website that covers the top 10 sites for writers. I haven’t yet gone through all of them, but for the few that I have they are very helpful.

Check it out!

Ad Placement

As most marketers who try to be in the know, I subscribe to way too many RSS feeds. I’m naive to think I can get through the close to thirty I have that update daily, but it can’t hurt to try.

One good post I found today from Future Now’s GrokDotCom was an article from econsultancy.com that touched on considerations of where you should be placing your banner Ads on your website. Couple of good points to think about before posting.

Check it out!

“Click”

This weekend I braved the airports to be in a friend’s wedding, but like thousands of other travels had my plans rerouted because of good ole Ike down in the Gulf.

So to pass what I knew was going to be a long day in the airport, and it was, so I picked up Bill Tancer’s Book, “Click” and got through it during my many layovers and time in the air.

Overall I thought it was a pretty solid book. I am in many respects hungry for the “red meat” of any new read and in the beginning struggled to see some of the more practical aspects of what he was saying. However, after having now a few days to reflect I think it’s safe to say that he’s done a pretty good job of analyzing some very interesting trends.

The book subtitle is “What millions of people are doing online and why it matters”, the book covers several topics related to the massive amounts of data Bill has collected over the years in studying our online habits.

The best chapters I thought were chapters four and six. Chapter four discusses an interesting concept I had not heard of before known as the “false hope concept” that is the notion that simply making a commitment to change gives us a feeling of short term control over our past failures, but that ultimately most of us fail to change our ways.

He charts the trends of searches related to such time honored traditions as dieting and smoking cessation, but also pointed to some more interesting trends like the surge in the search about pregnancy during the first of year. Apparently, getting pregnant is a bigger New Year’s resolution that we thought.

Chapter six covers the wide range of phobia’s and fears people have as evidenced by what they search online. Some of the fears are typical, heights, death, public speaking etc., but he also goes in to depth on some of the more nuanced social fears like intimacy and rejection.

Again, it was a good read, however for the more in depth analysis I woudl check out Tancer’s blog.

Cool New Websites

Went to the Kansas City DMA last week and heard a great presentation on Social Media by Valerie Jennings.

Probably the most striking thing I heard was several websites that I had yet to visit:
technorati.com – All things Blog
mashable.com – All that’s new on the web
metacafe.com – Great funny videos

I’m subscribing to the RSS feeds for Technorati and Mashable, so I will keep you updated on what I find the most benefical.