PRIVACY ALERT: Marketers may be tracking your online activity

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A recent Wall Street Journal investigation, part of their "What They Know" series of reports on online privacy issues reveals that marketers may be tracking your online activity.  Web users (especially children) are usually unaware that some of the websites they visit will install tracking software such as a "beacon" or "cookie" on their computers to track the other websites that they browse and sometimes even what they type on those sites in order to create a profile of the user which they can then sell to marketers.
Here are some of the findings as reported by the Journal::

• The study found that the nation's 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning. A dozen sites each installed more than a hundred. The nonprofit Wikipedia installed none.
• Tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive. Monitoring used to be limited mainly to "cookie" files that record websites people visit. But the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Some tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them.
• These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.*

For more news and video from the WSJ's "What They Know" series of reports, visit their website here.  Below is a video from the series discussing how a customer is profiled on websites.


*Source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html

Social Media: Marketing your business with YouTube

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You may have heard about the viral success of videos from Old Spice, Gillette, Blendtec and IKEA on YouTube, each with millions of views to date.  More and more, companies are looking to online video as a way to market their goods and services while also providing entertaining and informative content to consumers that stands apart form their competition.  Posting videos to YouTube is ideal for businesses large and small. The service is free and your videos can live online as long as you'd like, so a small initial investment to produce a video can result in long term returns.  An additional benefit to posting videos to YouTube - you don't have to worry about bandwidth issues on your own website - you can simply embed the code for your desired YouTube video and it will play on your website!

Some tips to making YouTube videos work for your business:

• Investing in expensive equipment to produce a video is simply not necessary - YouTube videos are just 320 x 400 pixels.  We recommend that you invest in a user-friendly video camera for under $500.
• Proper lighting while recording is important and doesn't have to be expensive.  (Read Bill Moyer's video lighting secrets for your home studio.)
• Choose a descriptive user name - this will become the name of your YouTube channel and you will not be able to change it.
• Be sure to include your website URL in your video.
• Videos must be under 10 minutes in length - but your video does not have to be that long!
• Give a good deal of thought to your choice of video name, your video description and the keywords you associate with your video, you want search engines to be able to find your video so chose keywords that best fit your business offerings and niche.
• Let your contacts know about your YouTube channel, notify them via email or on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter and be sure to post the URL on all your marketing materials and include the link in your email signature.
• Interact with other YouTube users - comment on relevant videos and subscribe to other channels in order to drive some traffic to your channel.

For more tips on making your YouTube videos a success, check out Social Media Examiner's 16 Tips for Successful Online Video Marketing.

Let us know if you are using online video to market your business, leave us a comment below with the URL for your videos.
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See for yourself why the videos from Old Spice, Gillette, Blendtec and IKEA went viral!

Old Spice


Gillette


Blendtec


IKEA

Social Media: Twitter and "tweeting"

Tweet Twitter is a free micro-blogging service where users post notes or "tweets" in 140 characters or less. If you are new to Twitter or curious about how you can use it to share information and opinions with others or to market your business, take a look at Twitter 101: How should I get started using Twitter? to learn how to set-up an account, "tweet" and "re-tweet" and discover others users to "follow." [See our blog about shortening URL's, this is a great way to help you stay within Twitter's 140 character limit]

As mentioned in our post about using social media for business, many business have had success using Twitter to generate business, check out Twitter's case studies to learn how companies, large and small, are engaging with customers, gaining invaluable word-of-mouth advertising and growing their businesses using this service.

Follow NMC on Twitter, @nmc2004

For lists of celebrities, musicians, news outlets and other interesting Twitter users to follow, check out wefollow.com
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Check out Twitter's YouTube video: "Twitter: discover what's new in your world"