Douglas Karr's Articles on Martech Zone
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Who’s Twittering You?
Reputation managers can set up alerts on micro-blogging and communicate to consumers, supporters and criticisms directly. Here's how to set up an alert for those communications within minutes.
- Content Marketing
5 Strategies to Get Attention on the Web
This might be an ironic post given the fact that my blog is in a slight decline in readership. The truth is that I know what’s causing it, but I lack the time right now to invest to stop it. No worries, though, I’ll turn it around soon! With that, I’ve been thinking a lot about what paths that companies…
- Content Marketing
PHP: Using Is.gd API to Shorten URL
Just read an article on the benefits and pitfalls of shortening URLs over at SEOmoz. I utilize the Is.gd API to do this: function doCurlRequest($url, $variable, $value) { $api = $url."?".$variable."=".$value; $session = curl_init(); curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_URL, $api); curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); $data = curl_exec($session); curl_close($session); return $data; } function doShortenURL($longurl) { $url = "http://is.gd/api.php"; $variable = "longurl"; $shorturl = doCurlRequest($url, $variable,…
- Content Marketing
We Hired an Attorney Today
It’s not a bad thing. Every week, for more than a year, I’ve had a reminder from 43 things to Start a Successful Business. That’s a tall order! Starting a business is one thing, making it successful is quite another. I’ve had quite a bit of success with the blog and I continue to get additional engagements because of the…
- Content Marketing
WordPress and MySQL: What’s Your Word Count?
There’s been some talk on blogs about the average word count of a WordPress post. Some light has been shed that search engines will only weigh the impact of the first x number of characters, where x is currently unknown. As a result, anything after that is simply a waste of words. I’m rather garrulous with my blog posts so…
- Content Marketing
Google Adsense Now Monetizing my Feed
For quite some time I ran affiliate marketing ads in my feed using the PostPost plugin I developed for WordPress and Commission Junction advertisements. It wasn’t really a source of any significant revenue, though, perhaps a few dollars a month. This week, I applied with Google Adsense to convert my feed from Feedburner to Google. The process to do this…
- Content Marketing
The New Business “Cards” Are Here!
When I posted about purchasing some new business cards, I received some great recommendations. Included were metal business cards and even a business card using a tag cloud. I decided to go in a completely opposite direction from my original cards. When folks hand me their business cards these days, I don’t have them for long – I get home…
- Content Marketing
Starbucks: The Inflation and Devaluation of a Brand
The United States really didn’t understand what coffee could taste like. Coffee grinds were flavored with chips for a long time, which helped maximize the profits of coffee companies. I had a friend who worked in a packaging plant, specifically on the equipment that filled and sealed coffee containers. He told me they changed brands all night, but never changed…
