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Killer Tactics Journal
In this week's issue: Article: How to Protect Your Site from Smart Tag Visitor Poaching - by Mark Joyner
News: Why "Memes" are the Future of Marketing
ve it a try now.
Article:
How to Protect Your Site from Smart Tag Visitor Poaching
by Mark Joyner
ou may have heard about a recent new convention put forth by Microsoft called the "Smart Tag".
The tags themselves have many various applications and the employment of the tags can come in various forms. For the purpose of this article, however, it's probably best to focus on what matters to you most:
A) How Smart Tags Can Steal Your Visitors.
B) The Seriousness of the Threat.
C) What You Can Do to Protect Yourself.
How Smart Tags Can Steal Your Visitors
Here's the bottom line - let's say that you have the word "turtle" on your website. If Microsoft, or one of their advertisers, wants to attract visitors related to that word, they can use smart tag technology to put a click-able icon next to every instance of that word. These "instances" can be within one of several apps on your machine - including Internet Explorer. (Yikes.)
How does this play out? This is your site: This is your site on smart tags
As you see, in the above example, anyone who visits your site could see one of these links, click on it, and be taken away to another location. Your visitor has just been poached!
The implication here is quite menacing. Response rates to your various websites will go down dramatically as the tags become supported by more and more users. Think about it - if your site is full of links to other sites, it will be increasingly difficult to keep the attention of your visitors long enough to close a sale. As if it wasn't hard enough already!
The Seriousness of the Threat
Microsoft, apparently to allay the fears of webmasters across the globe, announced that the new Smart Tag technology would be removed from Windows XP (the up-and-coming uber-OS soon to be released).
Most people are spreading this news to tell everyone that the threat is gone. I wish it were so.
What most people don't know is that Office XP already supports Smart Tags. Anyone that has Office XP installed can see the tags now. As this new version of Office gets wider and wider acceptance, the seriousness of this threat will increase. Further, no one knows if IE 6.0 will recognize the tags independent of Office XP. If it does, the s0* will hit the proverbial fan.
What You Can do to Protect Yourself
The good news is that protection is simple - albeit a pain in the ass.
Simply insert the following tag into the head of each of your HTML pages (anywhere between the <head> and </head> tags):
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
This will prevent Smart Tag generated links from appearing on your pages.
Folks, please keep in mind that I am only reporting what I have heard from a few very reliable sources. I recommend keeping abreast of any new developments on this front.
You have no reassurance that the above tag will always be recognized by Microsoft. Now, if Microsoft were to ignore the tag, this would not bode well for their current anti-trust case. Of course, while you'd be waiting for the courts to settle the matter, Microsoft would be poaching your visitors.
My bottom line advice: use the above meta tag on every single one of your pages! My company is now figuring out a way to add this to our thousands of pages globally - without having to edit every single one by hand. In my opinion, it's good insurance
Finally, please forward this article to every webmaster you know, so they can protect themselves as well. I've included a form to speed up this process below .
News:
Why "Memes" are the Future of Marketing
(Note: Don't panic -- only the first 5 sentences contain technical jargon. Thereafter, the marketing significance of memes is revealed.)
magine a world where DNA creates humans -- so that humans can produce more DNA. This may sound like a sci-fi movie, but there is more truth to it than fiction. Science calls it the study of "memes."
Memes (sometimes called "thought replicators" or "mind viruses") are genes that rampantly reproduce themselves through humans. Memes have stumped, as well as fascinated, scientists for years -- and have shown us how genetic engineering expands the limits of what is possible in the physical world.
What do memes have to do with marketing?
Jay Conrad Levinson has converted the concept of memes into a marketing model, added his own startling innovation, and ultimately invented "marketing memes" which are expected to expand the limits of how everything is marketed to everybody. Most marketers are familiar with viral marketing, which has a distant kinship with marketing memes. As a basis of comparison, if viral marketing were a typewriter, then marketing memes are a powerful word processor.
Metaphorically speaking, the use of marketing memes is equivalent to genetically engineering a faster-growing business.
An invention of such importance is only to be expected from Jay Conrad Levinson -- not only because he reinvented marketing when he authored the world's best-selling series of business books (Guerrilla Marketing), but also because he is the undisputed master of transforming virtually unknown businesses into profitable enterprises. As well versed as I am in marketing, I can also personally verify that just a few of Jay Levinson's unconventional strategies have earned me untold profits over the last 2 years.
Jay has been so fanatically secretive about his marketing memes concept that he has kept it cloaked behind a high-security fire-walled and encrypted network to prevent leakage. He will reveal the proprietary marketing concept for the first time at a single event -- the Guerrilla Marketing Boot Camp.
Jay will teach Boot Camp participants the step-by-step formula for creating a deadly marketing meme, which can create an infectious demand for any product or service, generate 5-figure monthly profits -- and crush competition.
The Guerrilla Marketing Boot Camp is only going to happen once. Click here for other Boot Camp highlights that are definitely worth your time to explore.
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