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FreakyFriday: Weird of the Day – How a Mobile App Can Give You Skin Cancer

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By: iCopywriter Blogger, Kimberly Crossland

When a group of design students at the Berg School of Communication in Stockholm, Sweden came up with an idea for an app, they had no idea how explosive it would be. The app concept has yet to be developed but is already creating a stir. Appropriately titled Bright Light, it was built to promote the brand RayBan Sunglasses. And in fact, even though the app has still not hit the market, their efforts have turned out to be more effective than past RayBan promotions.

The app works by using certain factors, such as season, building heights nearby, and sun paths to determine where the sunniest locations may be. The app also includes nearby amenities to help find the perfect destination. Then, directions from Google maps guide the app user to their spot in the sun.

But can the features of this app actually cause potential skin cancer?

  • The most potent UV rays – The app algorithm locates the areas with the strongest sun rays. These are the most harmful if the app user is exposed for excessive periods of time and without sunscreen protection.
  • Encourages socialization in the sun – The slogan used when designing this app concept was ‘Come join the sun, instead of searching for it!’ The goal of the app is to bring people together in the sunniest locations when there is more sun than shade.
  • Easy to navigate – Once the sunniest spots have been found and selected, the idea behind the app is to make it as easy as possible to get to those areas. Google maps are used to easily find the strongest rays of sun.
  • Risk of overexposure – Being exposed to sun is not always a bad thing. In fact, our bodies need exposure to the sun for Vitamin D. But overexposure is what can be harmful and lead to skin cancer, which is becoming increasingly common.

With this in mind, it makes sense that copycat applications have popped up from sunscreen companies, such as Coppertone with their app Coppertone Sunsight that is used to find the sunniest spots in New York City.

While the app itself may not be to blame for skin cancer in its users, it is a good idea for the designers to include tips on where to purchase sunscreen, and facts on when the sun is at its strongest to help educate the public on the dangers of spending too many hours and days exposed to harmful UV rays without protection.

Do you think apps have a responsibility to inform their users of risks such as these?

Have you checked out iCopywriter lately?

Is Your Blog A Link Bait Bomb?

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How to Avoid Being a Link Bait Blog – And Why You Want To…

By: iCopywriter Blogger, Kimberly Crossland

Getting backlinks to and from your blog is one of the top priorities of any company blog, right? Wrong.

Here’s why it shouldn’t be.

Link baiting is used by some blogs and companies to get links from other pages back to their website. I mean, it’s what you learned to should do for better search engine optimization, right? But link baiting can actually hurt companies in the end.

When a post is written with the sole purpose of having other pages link back to their site, they run the risk of obtaining links from sources that are not high quality, and drive their qualified readers away by creating a blog that is more of a burden to read than a help.

How can you be sure your blog helps your SEO without link baiting? Here are a few tips.

  • Write to your reader – When a blog post is written, you should always be sure the end reader is kept in mind. Instead of writing to search engines or for the sole purpose of being linked to, only use blog posts that will actually provide something of value to your reader.
  • Only post when you have quality information – Posting content, just for the sake of getting links back to your site, does nothing for your brand or website. In fact, posting content that is not informative or compelling will actually drive the people you want reading your blog, away.
  • Do not stuff your blog posts with keywords – Recently we wrote about how Google is cracking down with a new update to their algorithm on websites who stuff their pages with keywords. When you use keyword stuffing, not only does your page not sound natural, and typically it does not read well, but it also alerts search engines that you may be a web spammer instead of a legitimate site.
  • Keep your posts short and to the point – Most people skim through blog posts. When they see a blog post that is over approximately 750 words, they may get scared. Unless your blog post has a very specific and relevant topic with details that will intrigue the end user, such as this one from SEOMoz, posting long articles on basic information will only detour people away from your blog.

Link baiting has been used by many online marketers as an effort to garnish more backlinks with the hope that it will improve their SEO. However, if your company uses a copywriting service that instead follows these tips, your blog will go viral more naturally, and you will receive backlinks from more legitimate sources that send higher qualified traffic.

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

FreakyFriday: Weird of the Day – App Promises Make You Productive through ‘Self-Blackmailing’

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By: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

These days, we have about as many apps and devices to keep us productive as we have cat pictures and social networks working to sabotage that productivity. From time-tracking devices that gauge how long we’ve spent on certain no-no websites to the practice of “lifehacking” to find out how we pass every minute of every day, we have tons of high-tech ways to get our butts in gear and get things done, no matter how much time we want to spend looking at Ryan Gosling memes.

But is blackmail going to far?

A new app, now in Beta testing, called Aherk! thinks not. Its website touts it as a service that uses “goal-oriented” blackmailing to get users to achieve certain carefully laid out objectives, or else.

Or else what? Well, therein lies the fun part. When you set a goal with Aherk!, you also upload an embarrassing or compromising picture of yourself. If you don’t meet your goal in the timeframe you prescribe for yourself, the app automatically uploads said embarrassing photo to Facebook.

But how the app determines you’ve met your goal is, if anything, even weirder than the punishment for not doing so: it crowdsources. Your Facebook friends all get to vote as to whether the goal has been met. In other words, there’s plenty of potential for your friends to stab you in the back and get the app to upload your picture anyway, even if you have achieved your initial goal. That is, if you have really mean friends.

We think one of the funniest aspects of the app is the potential to match your embarrassing picture to the achievement you’re aiming for. For example:

  • Looking to lose weight? How about a picture of you at your worst angle, gobbling up your favorite food. Better yet, a close-up of all your chins.
  • Want to call Mom or Grandma more often? Try choosing something you’d never ever want your sweet granny to see. We’ll let your imagination do the rest.
  • Trying to be more productive at work? Upload a photo of yourself partaking in your most embarrassing habit, whether that’s playing Magic: The Gathering or watching one of the “Real Housewives” shows.
  • Want to be neater? Snap a pic of your house at its most disgusting – we’re talking crusty dishes in the sink and cockroaches in the cupboards. Nasty.

What do you think? Would the prospect of public humiliation make you more productive?

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

FREE — Everyone’s Favorite Four Letter “F” Word…

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How the Power of Free Can Boost Your Revenues

By: iCopywriter Blogger, Kimberly Crossland

Think giving stuff away for free means losing out on revenues? Think again.

A study done by Neuromarketing asked 2,500 shoppers what drove them to finalize a purchase online. The resounding theme from their top answers was that something was offered for free. And that is not surprising considering Amazon found the same result in a recent internal test. Here, they offered free shipping to several markets. The only market that did not rise quickly was France, where shipping was offered at only a reduced rate, but not for free.

The word has a powerful effect on consumers online, and one that companies should not ignore. After all, the difference between dramatically increasing sales by spending a few extra pennies on shipping, and losing customers to the competition is astounding.

How can your business get on the free bandwagon to boost revenues instead of incur higher costs? Here are a few tips.

  • Offer free shipping – We had to say it, especially after Amazon proved its importance in their internal study. Free shipping, for most products, is a no brainer. However, if your company ships a product that has a ridiculously high cost, such as heavy gym equipment, save the free shipping offer for special events like Cyber Monday where your competition is fierce.
  • Have a free return policy – Customers are far more likely to make a purchase online if they know they can send it back without a fee should they be unhappy with the product once it arrives. Zappos has made a killing providing this service and your company can too.
  • Give a free bonus – Can your product be upgraded in any way? Or do you have an add on that will make your customer happier that you can throw in for free? Mary Kay, a cosmetic company, trains some of their beauty consultants to offer a free gift after their customers reach a certain spending amount. This has proven to work for many consultants who have customers that spend just a little bit more to get their free gift. Often times, the cost of the free gift is lower than the profits the consultant earned just by giving something away.

The results that can be seen from offering something for free are not only higher revenues, but also better customer service levels, which encourage repeat customers and in turn boost revenues that much higher still.

What is your company offering for free?

Have you checked out iCopywriter lately?

FreakyFriday: Weird of the Day – Site Ranks Most Beautiful Women … Behind Bars!

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By: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

It seems these days there is a dating site for everyone. Whether you’re looking for a partner of the same faith, one who loves dogs or one who is also interested in underwater basket weaving, you’re sure to find a place to seek love on the wacky, wild World Wide Web.

Add to that list: those seeking love from behind bars.

The Huffington Post recently reported that the website Ranker had released a list culled from another site, Meet-an-inmate.com, of the 50 loveliest ladies currently incarcerated. Meet-an-inmate doesn’t exactly bill itself as a dating site; rather, it matches “lonely” inmates with willing pen pals, but that didn’t stop Ranker from making one of the seedier “hottest of” lists we’ve ever seen … and that’s saying a lot.

Some, but not all, of the entries on the hottest inmates list mention the women’s reason for incarceration. The reasons range from probation violation to drug possession and identity theft to aggravated assault and even murder. In fact, the weirdest thing of all about the site is how mismatched the women’s crimes are with what they’re looking for in love. The “hottest” behind-bars beauty, as rated by Ranker, does not list her reason for incarceration, but does mention that the man she’s looking for should be stable and able to take on responsibility.

We’re sorry to be harsh, but isn’t that maybe a little rich coming from someone in ?

In fact, the ethics of the rankings list, beyond its sheer FreakyFriday-worthy strangeness, have thrown us for a bit of a loop. Are these women being mocked and dehumanized, or made to feel part of the wider world by being ranked based on their looks? Is it cruel and voyeuristic, or innocently curious, to take a look at what they did to land themselves behind bars?

We’re not sure, and we want to hear from you. What do you think of the Meet-an-inmate service, and of Ranker’s list? Exploitative, or all in good fun? Let us know in the comments!

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

Top 4 Reasons You Should Use Linked In for Your Business

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By: iCopywriter Blogger, Kimberly Crossland

Sure, most of us have signed up on Linked In and are now using it as our own personal online resume. But if this is all you are using it for, you are missing out. Linked In is helping businesses create their own sort of resume online. It is also being used not only to be found, but to find others. The world of opportunity created by Linked In for businesses is far more profound than most small businesses realize.

Here are four ways you should utilize this powerful social network for your company.

  1. Draw in readers
    Give your brand a boost as a thought leader in your industry. Post links to your blog or guest blog posts that you have written and attract readers to your site. Once you’ve posted quality articles that keep readers interested, your brand will become more established as an expert, and people will soon turn to you for help from your business.
  2. Create a presence
    Get known online by establishing your presence in a professional social network. When you post content that is compelling and sharable, people will spread your name around like wildfire, creating a stronger presence online. Provide value through interesting articles and blog posts, and in return, your online presence will get you noticed.
  3. Use it as a lead generation machine
    Don’t just attract readers to your website or posts. Use Linked In to go out and find people in your target market. Use the Linked In search function to make a personal connection with the people who are most likely to use your product or service. Then communicate with them on a person-to-person level. They will not feel like they are being sold to, but instead, they will be appreciative of the help your company has provided them.
  4. Connect better with customers and clients
    Use Linked In as a way to get to know your customers or clients on a more personal level – a CRM of sorts. Before a meeting, look at their profile and find out where they went to school, or one of their general interests. Use that as an ice breaker in a meeting and you could automatically get a leg up on the competition by showing that you did your homework and cared enough to get to know them before the meeting.

Your business cannot afford to not have a presence on Linked In. Get started easily by hiring professionals to write compelling content for your business that will get you noticed and spread the word about the value you are offering. Then, watch your business take off.

What have you done on Linked In to attract more business?

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

Move Over Panda, Google’s Latest Update, Penguin, is Here…Will Your Site Be Hit?

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By: iCopywriter Blogger, Kimberly Crossland

Businesses beware! Google is coming after websites all over the Internet and shutting down the ones that they think abuse the system. After recent updates to the Panda system, Google is pushing out yet another update to their search engine algorithm in an effort to stop “black hat webspam” from polluting search results.

This update will be live for search results in all languages and is estimated to directly affect roughly 3% of all English websites. In fact, the update is so big, Google’s engineer Matt Cutts even mentioned in his blog a few days ago that the changes will be noticeable by regular users of the search engine giant.

So what can you expect to see?

  • Tighter controls on keyword stuffing.
    For businesses that have tried to overly optimize their website and stuff too many keywords onto their web pages, Google is cracking down. While Google still agrees that it is important to have appropriate use of keywords on a website, overstuffing a page with redundant text shows Google’s new algorithm an unnatural use of the term and concludes that the page does not provide the searcher useful information.
  • Restriction on the use of unnatural text or links.
    Some businesses take an approach of spinning content and linking keywords to another page that is irrelevant to the actual onpage content. Google is putting a stop to this practice by punishing sites that do this as they feel it does not provide any value to the person searching for a specific topic.

But this is not the end of SEO, or the use of keywords on a website. In fact, Cutts makes a distinct effort to note that those websites using the right SEO techniques will be rewarded and will actually benefit from eliminating these pages.

If your business is providing legitimate, useful content, and answering a need your reader is searching for, then you may actually benefit from this new update that will weed out the sites that are abusing SEO strategy.

The best way to keep from being punished is to continue to provide new, interesting and relevant content on your pages. When keywords fit naturally on a page within the context of what is written, Google will actually reward your SEO efforts with higher rankings.

What are your thoughts on Google’s new algorithm? And will you be making any changes to your website? iCopywriter can help!

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

 

FreakyFriday: Weird of the Day – 20 percent of Americans Aren’t Internet Users

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By: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

According to a study released April 13 by the Pew Research Center, a rather startling number of Americans – 1 in 5 – do not regularly, and in most cases have never used the Internet. 

The study found that the most common people to fall into this no-Web category were:

  • People who elected to take the survey in Spanish
  • Seniors
  • Adults with an education level lower than a high school diploma
  • People whose household incomes were less than $30,000 annually
  • Disabled people

This data reveals a great deal about the uneven access to the Internet plaguing the less advantaged in this country, an issue everyone from civil rights groups to the federal government has attempted to tackle. In fact, Tech News Daily reported last year that the United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have a governmental guarantee of universal Internet access for its citizens.

As serious as the issues of net neutrality and free access to the Web are, we can’t help thinking about how much more we’d get done in a day if we were among those who didn’t use the Internet regularly (the Pew study did reveal that many people who don’t use the Internet make the choice because they don’t find the Web “relevant.”)

In our Internet-free fantasy lives, we think we’d:

  • Finally start that salsa/herb/rose garden we’ve always wanted
  • Actually clean out the shoulder-padded 80s blazers from our closets (ditto the jeans we were sure we’d fit back into by this point in our never-ending diets)
  • Exercise every day and definitely go back to hot yoga (which we did once a couple years ago and totally loved, really we did)
  • Cook elaborate meals from Julia Childs’ cookbook, á la “Julia and Julia,” but obviously without the blogging
  • Go on long, rambling walks, just because
  • Dust
  • Read Proust
  • Organize all our old family photos into photo albums, you know, with actual pages? (Bye bye, Smilebox).
  • Make all our Christmas presents by hand, including the wrapping paper
  • Subscribe to tons of magazines because we wouldn’t have Pinterest anymore
  • Actually keep the phonebooks that show up on our front steps every so often…and use them to get in touch with people…on a land line
  • Spend more time with the people we love

So, while we know that in reality, life without the Internet would be arduous and pretty bizarre, we can’t help thinking it might be a little refreshing, too.

What would be your favorite pastime sans Internet? We’re dying to hear!

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

Could Sites Like DuckDuckGo Actually Compete With Search Giant Google?

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By: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

Unless you’re a search engine or online privacy geek (which we are) you probably haven’t heard of the search startup DuckDuckGo, but the engine is quietly building buzz and momentum on the tech scene, having been featured on best-of lists in publications like Time and PCMag.

The search engine, which launched six years ago but has gained most of its attention in the past six months or so, has styled itself as a more relevant and, perhaps more importantly (to us, at least) private alternative to search giant Google. DuckDuckGo makes clear in its incredibly detailed privacy policy that, in no uncertain terms, it neither shares, nor even collects, users’ personal information, including aggregating or “bubbling” your searches.

But does it really work as well as, or better than Google? We put the two side by side and came up with the following pros and cons for DuckDuckGo.

Pros:

  • More privacy. This one is a big deal to us. The main reason we can see for moving away from Google for our search engine needs is that it basically tracks our every move and knows way, way too much about us based on what we search, and which results we click on. We trust DuckDuckGo when it tells us those things aren’t happening on its site.
  • Less clutter. Google something like “bankruptcy,” and your results are crowded with advertisements and sponsored sites (those dreaded yellow highlighted results at the top of all Google pages). A DuckDuckGo search for the same phrase turns up just one discreet sponsored link, and no sidebar ads. Plus, the top box on the search page contains helpful hints like a definition of the term and related searches “bankruptcy alternatives” and “creditors’ rights.”

Cons:

  • No autocomplete. Take the bankruptcy example again. Type “bankr …” into Google and it suggests a litany of possible searches, including “bankruptcy,” “bankruptcy process” and, in my case, being a Tucson, Ariz. resident, “bankruptcy in Arizona.” While it’s a little eerie that Google knows where you live, it can still be incredibly helpful to get those tailored search suggestions. While DuckDuckGo is working on an autocomplete option and offers an open-source plugin, it still doesn’t work as seamlessly as Google’s type-ahead results.
  • It’s just a search engine. There’s no denying that Google’s bevy of other products, from mail to calendar to documents to apps for business, make our lives easier, if less private. DuckDuckGo is just used for search; nothing is personalized or added on except some super-geeky extras for hardcore tech and coding nerds. In a way, it’s beautifully simple, but it’s certainly not as complete a package as the Google behemoth is able to offer.

The verdict:

DuckDuckGo is cool, especially if you’re fed up with Google’s increasingly outrageous privacy issues. At the same time, it’s just not Google – the user experience isn’t as seamless or as all encompassing. And while DuckDuckGo’s search results seem just as complete and accurate (maybe more so due to the lack of spam and ads), we can’t imagine that many people are going to migrate their whole online lives away from the great and powerful Google.

Have you checked out iCopywriter.comlately?

FreakyFriday: Weird of the Day – “WHAT UP COACHELLA?!” – Tupac’s “Return” to the Big Stage

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By: iCopywriter Senior Blogger, Gaia Veenis

The Internet has been abuzz since Sunday’s ghostly Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The crowd was already whipped up into a frenzy for the performance featuring not only Dre and Snoop, but many of the biggest names in hip hop including 50 Cent, Eminem, Warren G and Wiz Khalifa… and even the late Tupac Shakur.

That’s right, the Doggfather resurrected Shakur – who has supposedly been deceased since 1996 – via hologram. It seems that with computer generated technology and some old-fashioned slight-of-hand, even bringing back the dead is possible.

Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg headlined the festival Sunday night starting at around 10:30 p.m. and wrapping up around midnight. There was an estimated 80,000 people in attendance either at the main stage, where Dre and Snoop performed, or at one of the smaller stages. The hip hop legends drew a massive crowd, which went wild when Tupac’s ghostly hologram greeted them, saying “What up Coachella,” wearing acid washed jeans and exposing his bare chest. The buzz created by the smoke and mirrors that brought back Pac’s ghost has reverberated far past that crowd, and into the blogosphere.

Many wondered just how they managed to pull off the seamless holographic performance of “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” along with Snoop, followed by Tupac’s solo performance of “Hail Mary.” Even more tweeted, blogged and status updated about how awestruck, or even freaked out, they were by the whole spectacle. Videos of the performance filled up YouTube’s pages. Keywords like “Hail Mary,” “Hologram,” “Pac” and “Tupac” started trending immediately.

According to the experts, the hologram is really quite simple, despite how complicated or magical it might look. The idea goes back to 19th century technology that relies on strategically placed reflections, but new computer technologies made it look even more spectacular. Those trained in holography could easily spot the main trick – the stagecraft of interacting with the holographic image to help the crowd suspend disbelief. The image itself was most likely just a high definition video, which could have been reflected off a screen with the help of a sheet of mylar.

A repeat weekend of Coachella is already underway, and rumors speculate Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg may be repeating the holographic performance on tour. The festival is running two weekends in a row this year, with all identical music acts, due to the high demand for tickets.

This Sunday’s audience won’t be quite as stunned when (or if) Tupac’s ghost returns to the stage for a repeat performance, but it will probably look and feel just as bizarre.

So, were any of you out there actually at Coachella last weekend? What did you think of the now-infamous resurrection? We’d love to hear from you!

Have you checked out iCoypwriter.com lately?