I found an interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor this afternoon about how kids increasingly don’t know much about King (aside from the fact that they get to miss a day of school because of him). I’ve certainly come to take King’s struggles and achievements for granted, and this piece made me stop and really consider why today is a national holiday.

That, of course, is unrelated to the Marketing Monday Roundup, for which we’ve compiled several other interesting articles about technology, social media, and online marketing. Here are the winners this week:

Why Social Is So Disruptive to Traditional Marketing
I appreciate Judy Shapiro’s piece in Social Media Today because she helpfully articulates the shift from a content distribution platform to a community distribution platform. She also serves as a model of a marketing industry veteran who’s adapted to the new landscape (or rather, is adapting) and is embracing new ideas about what marketing is in the social web.

Justified – Beginning Steps To Proving Your Internet Marketing Point
Carrie Hill’s post on Search Engine Land is specific to using Google Analytics and AdWords to measure marketing success — which is useful in and of itself — but I also like her opening point about the need to justify marketing expenses and why it’s essential to have clear metrics to measure your success.

11 useful tips for marketing your brand on LinkedIn
A well-written, concise set of tips from Katerina Walter on The Next Web for how to use LinkedIn as a business.

What’s in a gTLD?
We’re accustomed to a rather limited set of top-level domains: .com, .net, etc. We’re now seeing the expansion of TLDs to the point that someone could conceivably own “.beaches” and license the subdomains of it (for instance, “spain.beaches”) to others. This insightful column in The Economist nicely contextualizes this development.

Online Shoppers Are Rooting for the Little Guy
Not exactly a triumphant story about small businesses rising above the online retailing behemoths, but an encouraging New York Times piece nonetheless for small and mid-sized retailers.

Circle Up: How Brands Are Using Google+
Google+ is on a lot of people’s minds these days. Still, most of us don’t have the slightest idea how to use it, especially as a business. Mashable contributor Lauren Hockenson offers good insights, three straightforward tips, and a useful slideshow of 10 brands that are using Google+ well. While no one is sure if Google+ will catch on with a critical mass of people to really rival Facebook, there’s enough attention being paid to it that it’s worth it for any business to start a Google+ page.

Old services meet new media: a tweeting cabbie’s growing business
I love this article by Jacqui Cheng for Ars Technica about a Chicago cabdriver who has built a brand for himself using Twitter, Google Latitudes, and other location-based apps. A great anecdote about the creative uses of these tools.

Who cares how many email addresses your dealership collects
This one is a few months old but it was featured in DealerRefresh’s “Best of 2011″ post last week. Regardless of when it was posted, it’s a good, short piece about common pitfalls in building up a mailing list and using (or not using) it to drive sales and build relationships with prospective customers. A useful article not just for auto dealers but anyone who deals with customers on a regular basis.

Five Easy Steps to Simple Camera Mastery
Good photos are the key to a successful flyer. If you fill your flyer with clear, well-lit, well-composed photos, you’re bound to get more calls from it than you would it your photos were dark and grainy. This article from the New York Times offers 5 basic tips for the amateur photographer to take better pictures on your digital camera.

I hope you enjoy these articles as much as I have. If you have thoughts about any of them, feel free to leave your comments.

4 Ways Small Business Websites Can Drive More Sales
A Mashable piece by vFlyer CEO Aaron Sperling on how businesses can better utilize their websites to drive sales. Read this article! It’s direct and practical, just like Aaron.

Breaking Down Clicks Per Connection On Facebook, Google+ and Twitter
A great post by Inman News Chief Evangelist Chris Smith about an experiment he did to find out where the content he was posting was generating the most engagement. More interesting to me than the results is the method by which he set out to quantify the relative engagement of his readers and followers.

3 Marketing Things We Do Wrong That We Could Easily Do Right
A short, succinct, and useful post on three common marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

Top 5 Trends for Search & Social Media Marketing in 2012
The obligatory “2012 predictions” piece, but valuable nonetheless. Not surprisingly, mobile and social are the focus.

Unboxed: Even a Giant Can Learn to Run
New York Times profile of outgoing IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano and a short history of how he led the company’s remarkable rebound. I think the first of his four questions should be at the top of any business owner’s or professional’s list.

Microsoft Celebrates The Demise Of IE6 In The US
Finishing off this week’s Roundup is this TechCrunch article on how Microsoft is embracing the death of Internet Explorer 6, which clings to a 1% share of the browser market. Is this the other 1%?

I hope you enjoyed the Marketing Monday (Tuesday) Roundup this week. If you have any thoughts on the items posted, leave a comment!

1. Astrid Task/To Do List

For Android
Not available for iPhone yet.

Astrid Task/To Do List is a wonderfully designed, deceptively powerful to do list app. A to do list app, you might ask? What’s so special about that? Well, Astrid allows you to easily change priority levels and deadlines, set notifications, add notes and tags for each item on your list. What’s more, you can sync Astrid with your Google Calendar, making it easy to update your to do list on your phone and computer at once. Need to email a flyer on Thursday? Enter it in Astrid, schedule a reminder, and then forget about it. Easy.

For iPhone users, Remember the Milk is another handy to do list app that’s available for iPhone.

2. Evernote

For Android
For iPhone

Do you feel like you’re constantly thinking of things or coming up with promising ideas, only to forget them later? I know I do. Evernote solves that problem by providing an easy way to save notes, web pages, pictures, sounds, and more, and then organize and search for them later. If you’re at a property you’ll be creating a flyer for, you can take notes about the property and save them in Evernote, then pull them up when you’re on your computer and ready to create the flyer.

3. Adobe Photoshop Express

For Android
For iPhone

This is a rather basic image editing app that’s useful if you want to crop, rotate, or add some artistic flourishes to the photos you take on your phone. If you’re at a house you’re going to create a flyer for, you can take photos and edit right from there. The photos are saved in your free Photoshop.com account (though you could also upload them to Picasa, Dropbox [see below], or another image hosting application), so you can access them from there and upload them to your flyer when you’re back at your computer.

4. Dropbox

Dropbox for Android
Dropbox for iPhone

Dropbox is similar in some ways to Evernote, but its focus is on storing files in the cloud. It makes it easy to access documents, photos, videos, and other files across all your devices. No more emailing attachments to yourself — just save the files in Dropbox and then pull them up on your computer or tablet.

5. Google Voice

Google Voice for Android
Google Voice for iPhone

Google Voice has been around for a couple years now and has been adopted by many as their go-to phone number. Why? One, it lets you choose a phone number using any area code (that is, any available number), so if you’re still using the same cell phone number you had in high school, even though you’ve moved across the country (like I am), you can get a local number through Google Voice. The best part (I think) is that Google Voice transcribes your voicemails, so you can read them just as you would emails.

Note: I know that there have been some issues reported with the Google Voice app on certain providers, so check to see if the app will work with your provider before you install it.

6/7. Yelp and AroundMe

Yelp for Android
Yelp for iPhone
AroundMe for Android
AroundMe for iPhone

These are two different apps that I’m putting together because they can serve a similar function for vFlyer users, particularly those in real estate. Yelp is the popular business reviews site and AroundMe shows you what’s, um, around you, wherever you and your phone are. They’re both useful in becoming a “neighborhood expert,” an idea that is becoming increasingly important in real estate sales and a good way for agents to add value to their services.

It’s great when you can identify some nearby restaurants, cafes, and other retail establishments in your house for sale or apartment for rent flyer, and both Yelp and AroundMe make that very easy to do.

8/9. Trulia and HotPads

Trulia for Android
Trulia for iPhone
HotPads for Android
HotPads for iPhone

These are again two different apps that vFlyer users in real estate and rentals may well find useful. For one thing, Trulia and HotPads are syndication partners of vFlyer, so these apps allow you to easily check your vFlyer listings on each site to verify that they’re looking good. But these apps also allow you to see what’s for sale or for rent around you; for a buyer’s agent, this is valuable. I like Trulia’s open house feature, which shows you which properties nearby have upcoming open houses. And HotPads has a great map-based interface that’s perfectly suited for a mobile app.

10. Pandora

Pandora for Android
Pandora for iPhone

Pandora doesn’t really fit this list as it won’t help you become a vFlyer superuser, but it’s an awesome app that deserves a place on any apps list. If you’re not familiar with Pandora, it’s a free music streaming program that allows you to create your own customized radio stations based on artists or genres you like. So if nothing else, you can rock out to your favorite jams while creating flyers.

These are of course just a sampling of the thousands of apps out there. If you’ve discovered an app that’s helped you use vFlyer better, let us know!

Email addresses can be entered one at a time into the email flyer tool, or imported using the Plaxo contacts tool.  But checking off emails one at a time—especially when you’re reaching out to a few hundred contacts—can get a bit tedious.

Time to get to know the CSV file.  CSV stands for “comma separated value”.  CSV documents are viewed as spreadsheets in programs like Microsoft Excel.

By saving your contacts in a CSV file, or group of CSV files, you can copy and paste addresses directly into the Email Addresses field, saving loads of time and making it easier to keep track of who you’ve contacted.

You can export your contacts as a CSV file from most any email client.  There are instructions online for Outlook Express, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail.

When exporting, save the CSV file to your hard drive, then open it using a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc.

Email addresses will be given their own column.  You can organize your contacts here, and easily grab a specific number of email addresses.  Here I’m highlighting and copying the first 24 contacts in my list.

Back to vFlyer, I can now paste the addresses I just copied directly into the “Email Addresses” tool.  (Note: Paid subscribers can enter up to 100 emails at a time, and up to 2000 a day.  Free users are limited to 10 and 50, respectively.)

Now you’re ready to send the flyer.

By segmenting your contacts into spreadsheets, you can better manage your email list.  Add a blank row between each group of 100 (or 10) contacts, or create different spreadsheets for different segments of your business.  When it comes time to email your listings, just open the appropriate document, grab the right number of addresses, and send off your spiffy new flyer.

Use the Compatibility View feature, which essentially reverts your browser to Internet Explorer 8 temporarily. You can go into Compatibility View by clicking the icon that looks like a broken file next to your browser address bar (see image below).

-or-

Use a different browser such as Firefox or Chrome until we resolve the Internet Explorer 9 issues. Keep an eye out on our blog and website for updates.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign in to your Google account, and select “Documents” from the fancy new Google account toolbar at the top of your page.

2. Beneath the Google Docs logo, beside the “create new” button, you’ll find an option for “Upload…”

3. Select the type of file you’ll be uploading: text (documents, presentations, spreadsheets), or image (PDFs, scanned documents), and select the file from your hard drive. If you’ve got the file on your desktop, just drag and drop it into the upload area. Then press “Start Upload”.

4. Once the file has finished, click the link to go “back to Google Docs”, and you’ll find the document in your list – open the document, and make sure everything looks as it should. Now you’re ready to publish.

5. Click the “Share” button in the upper-right hand corner. You’ll see the default permissions setting is “Private”. Click the “change” link, and set the permissions to “Public on the Web”. Press “Save”.

6. You will be provided with a link to your new published document. Add this link to your flyer, and move on to the next item on your list.

For more detailed instructions, check out this page from Google Docs Help:
Uploading documents

Of course, there’s a lot more to Twitter than what’s covered in this video, but we hope it provides a basis for successful tweeting, and proves useful to both beginning and established Twitter users.

If there’s a topic you’d like covered in a video short, please let us know.

One way to quickly gain broad exposure is through syndication, or the automatic distribution of a listing to multiple websites.  vFlyer is one of a number of online services that automatically submits listings to online marketplaces and classifieds sites.  In this post, we’ll break down the various sites to which we syndicate and give you an idea of the exposure our platform can yield.

vFlyer partner site traffic in millions of viewers each month:*

1. Google Maps 35.8
2. Indeed 12.6
3. Yahoo! Real Estate 6.4
4. Zillow 5.1
5. Trulia 4.1
6. Simply Hired 4.0
7. Oodle 3.9
8. eBay Classifieds 3.7
9. Backpage 2.8
10. AOL Real Estate 1.4
11. FrontDoor 1.4
12. OLX 1.2
13. Vast 0.9
14. HotPads 0.9
15. Geebo 0.25
16. Cyberhomes 0.12
17. Jobalot 0.11

*Traffic data from Compete.com. Compete compiles data from a panel of over 2 million consumers – read about their methodology here.

You might be asking yourself, why are vFlyer listings showing up on Google Maps? About a year ago, real estate and rental listings submitted to Google Base were integrated into Google Maps as part of the retiring of Google Base’s search interface.  So while vFlyer continues to send a data feed to Google Base, housing listings now appear on Google Maps. There’s even a separate real estate search option in Maps that allows you to find real estate and rentals in a particular area.

Second on the list with a whopping 12 million unique views per month is the job site Indeed, a job “aggregator” site that, unlike some large job boards (e.g., Monster.com), has recently enjoyed tremendous growth.  An emphasis on search engine optimization has allowed Indeed to capture a huge amount of traffic straight from Google, and for vFlyer users looking to hire, this is good news… indeed.

Getting back to real estate, let’s have a look at the top five real estate-specific sites on the list.  Yahoo! Real Estate comes in first with 6.4 million viewers, Zillow is second with 5.1 million, Trulia third with 4.1 million, AOL Real Estate fourth with 1.4 million, and FrontDoor fifth with 1.4 million.

With the exception of AOL Real Estate, all of these sites show overall growth in the year 2010, with Trulia up 1.17 million unique views per month, and Yahoo! Real Estate up 1.16 million compared to this month last year.  These are companies that, despite a poor housing market, have continued to gain traffic by improving their portals and enabling online consumers with more information.  With Yahoo! Real Estate and Zillow recently teaming up, Yahoo! Real Estate has gotten a nice boost in listings, and Zillow has become an absolute must for syndication.  Combined, traffic on these two sites challenges Realtor.com, the longtime leader in the space.

Let’s now take a look at some of the broader online marketplaces and classifieds sites to which vFlyer syndicates: Oodle, with 3.9 million unique views per month, eBay Classifieds (3.7 million), Backpage (2.8 million), OLX (1.2 million), and Vast (0.9 million).

Check out eBay Classifieds (shown in red), with a stratospheric jump of over 3.6 million monthly visits in the past year.  As many vFlyer users will recall, this site used to be known as Kijiji.  While the name remains in Canada, Kijiji USA was rebranded as eBay Classifieds at the end of March.  This seems to have been an effective move by eBay (note the difference between March and April), and with a parent site (eBay.com) ranked #22 worldwide by Alexa, there’s reason to believe eBay Classifieds will continue to grow in the near future.

To put this all in perspective, let’s look at Craigslist.  With nearly 60 million visitors last month, Craigslist is the undisputed king of classifieds sites.  This should come as no surprise to most of you, but the magnitude of difference between traffic on a top real estate site like Trulia and Craigslist is quite staggering.  Just for fun, let’s throw in Facebook and Twitter as well.

These are three of the top 10 sites in the US (according to Alexa): Facebook at #1, Twitter at #9, and Craigslist at #10. To answer the question I posed earlier, these are now the most important places to establish oneself online.  But let’s not discount the other classifieds sites we reviewed.  Diligent Craigslist posting and staying on top of the social media game take a big chunk out of one’s marketing resources (read: time).  Syndication is the proverbial low-hanging fruit of online marketing.  While these sites alone may not generate the number of leads you might get from posting regularly to Craigslist, they still account for a huge amount of online traffic; having your listings syndicated to them by vFlyer allows you to “pluck the fruit”, and leaves you time to focus on building your audience through Facebook, Twitter, and your blog.

I’ll finish with another question: what role does listing syndication play in your online marketing?  And are there any other classifieds sites that you’d like vFlyer to syndicate to?  (Sorry, Craigslist is not an option.)

If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably heard plenty about social media. You’re most likely aware that it’s an incredible phenomenon, privy to some fantastic tales of success, and evaluating your role in it all. Here at vFlyer, we want our users to be equipped with the knowledge and tools to succeed online. To that end, we’ve put together an article outlining some best practices for social media marketing. We call it “Social Media 101 for vFlyer Users.” Below are some of the highlights. To read the full article, head on over to vFlyer’s help center.

Think of your web presence as a house in the midst of a block party. Inside your house are your friends and family – your existing customers. You want them to have a great time; you want them to feel welcome, special, and happy. But you want your party to be the biggest and best on the block! People walking by (casual internet visitors) need to see how much fun your guests are having and want to come inside. Social media can help your guests have more fun and attract passers-by to join the party.

An effective web presence should include the following components: a website, blog, Facebook Page, and Twitter account. Your website is the center of everything, and the end destination for the traffic you attract. Your blog is your official company voice, and your Facebook and Twitter accounts are outposts in the raging rivers of social media. Start with this basic framework, then gradually add more as needed.

The content built on this framework should address the following questions: Who are you? What do you do? and What’s happening now? Your content should also offer visitors something they want, be it news, inspiration, humor, advice, or resources. Most importantly, keep your content fresh! Even if your readers are just a select group of friends and family, get in the habit of creating new content. One day, thousands of visitors will traffic your site, and you’ll need to serve up fresh content to keep ‘em coming back for more. Fresh, clean content! Not a bunch of ads or a six-month-old blog post.

Online, one should be bold enough to write about something already covered by 100 other bloggers, real enough to state his or her true intentions, and outgoing enough to friend, follow, and comment on anything and everything he or she finds interesting.

Finally, focus on yourself! This may sound selfish, but I think Chris Guillebeau got it just right: your message is what people want to hear. If I’m interested in what somebody else has to say, I can follow somebody else. I’m following you because I want to hear what you have to say, so say it!

Genuine humanness is what we all respond to online, so here’s another piece of advice: throw all the social media advice you receive, including our article, right out the window, and just be your own crazy self on the internet. Nobody’s made it very far without ignoring at least most of what they’ve been told. In any case, let us know what social media strategies work or don’t work for you – we’d love to hear about it.