Game Guides and Strategies

Good Morning, Today I am doing a little something different for this post. I am not a gamer but several folks have asked if I knew of places to go for help with games. I came across a few sites where I do some affiliate marketing so I am sending them out to you for your consideration. I do have a small request, since I do not play games should you decide to give one of these a try I would appreciate it if you would get back to me with the pro and cons of the games.  I promote a lot of products so it’s difficult to try each and ever one customer review is most important to me. Your opinions help me decide if they are worthy of further promotion.

 

 

Recently we released a lot of features for the Dugi addon but we ran out of time to announce it and provide detailed explanations. Some of you might have noticed the new features already if you recently updated and read the change log.

Anyway, check out this new video below which will show you on how to use all the display options in the settings menu, which will also feature the new Multistep Mode

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 You Need An Automated, Gold-Making System That Uses Solid, Proven Strategies Unique To Your Server to Rake In The Gold On Autopilot Works on Both Windows and Mac

 

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Game Backup System V2.0 
that includes special software and tutorials
to making perfect copies & backups of your
games. You can use GBS to make a 1:1 copy of 
virtually any game, on all of the most popular 
consoles, including the Xbox360, Nintendo Wii,
PS3 and even video DVDs and PC games

 

 

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Ten marketing phrases you need to stop using now~By David Petherick

It's time for a little rant. Words are powerful, until they start to become abused, by being lazily thrown in parrot-like as part of loathsome marketingspeak and managementspeak. Here are the current Top Ten words and phrases that annoy the hell out of me.

1: Game-changing

Here's how to change the game of cricket: replace the cricket ball with a shuttlecock. It certainly changes the game, but it doesn't make it a better game, or one that's going to be enjoyed by players or spectators. There are very few things that really change the game. It's more realistic to focus on improving your game, or to realise you're playing a different game.

2: Groundbreaking

In similar vein to game-changing, this has become a cliche, and is lazily and incorrectly used as a synonym for 'new'. Are you digging the foundations for a grand new building that defies architectural precedent? Are you trying to suggest that digging a hole is something amazing? It's not, so shut up.

3: Engagement

Did you give her a ring and ask her to marry you? Then it's not engagement. This word is especially popular when talking about social media: "this offers the opportunity for engagement with customers". It's also combined very often with another choice phrase, so that you end up "driving engagement".

4: Thinking outside the box

Dear God, I thought this was gone, but it's still there, and keeps reappearing like a stubborn case of athlete's foot. What, and where is, the box you are talking about? Use this phrase, and I'll assume you are referring to the tiny little cardboard receptacle in which your feeble brain is rattling around. Forget the box.

5: Go viral

It's not 2005 any more kids. So if you still think you can create content designed to "go viral" then I think it's time for you to open an envelope containing your P45 or pink slip. This phrase was dead almost before it first started to be abused in Powerpoint and chocolate biscuit sessions.

6: Driving / Driver

"This is driving up engagement across social channels." No it's not. "This will act as the driver for this interaction" No it won't. Do you think you're like Fernando Alonso? Or are you a chauffeur? No, gracias.

7: Unique

A cliche again, and the worst type, because usually, this now means the opposite. "A unique opportunity" is best translated as "the same opportunity again, perhaps in a thin disguise". Avoid.

8: Impact

This is an incredibly flexible little word, and is used as a verb and a noun. "This will impact impressions favourably." And "This had a significant impact". It's such a nice satisfying sounding word, but it's simply abused too often. Impact describes a collision, or the effect of one thing on another. Use affect or effect, and people will stop tuning out, because they might just understand what the hell you're rabbiting on about. This word has become jargon.

9: Front-of-mind

The human brain does not work like a conveyor belt, and even brain surgeons admit they know only a small fraction of what there is to learn about the workings of the human brain, so this phrase is entirely ridiculous. Quite aside from anything else, assuming that people have even more than a passing interest in your products or services is highly delusional.

10: Implementation

Just shut up. This means 'doing stuff' or putting something into effect. "The key stage will be in effectively implementing this strategy." Ugh. I often hear the gleeful substitution of 'execution' for this word, which is just as feeble-minded. "We need to execute on this plan". Nah. You need to fire the next person who uses that phrase.

11: What about you?

What words or phrases do you have to add to this list? I look forward to hearing your gems...

 

 

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Are you ready for the place graph? ~By JD Lasica

For years, entrepreneurs, tech observers and funders have known two things about the geolocation space: It holds an enormous amount of promise, and it’s taking an awfully long time to get there.
Geolocation startups are hot in Silicon Valley right now, from Zkatter, a San Francisco-based startup from British young gun Matt Hagger that wants you to capture and share moments in real time through mobile video, to Findery, the venture-backed San Francisco startup from Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake that wants you to leave notes, media and digital objects for others at specific locations.
What’s my connection with geoloco? For the past half year I’ve been working on a geolocation startup called Placely (register for the beta here). We’re still early in development, so I’ll talk more about our plans for Placely in a future post. But today I think it’s worth doing a quick survey of how far we’ve come (not very) and how far we still have to go as geolocation gets ready for its closeup.

Platial: Giving us an early understanding of what a ‘place’ means

In 2005, the same year I co-founded Ourmedia, the world’s first free video hosting and sharing service (a month before a little startup called YouTube came along), up in Portland another venture was just getting underway. Platial (tagline: “your collaborative atlas”) described itself on its pre-launch website as “a rapidly developing application and community pivoting on the anchors of user annotation, layerability, collaborative mapping, social networking and real world publishing.” Heady times for those of us out to remake the world!
I first heard of Platial when I gave a guest lecture at UC Berkeley six years ago this week (and wrote about it on this blog). Instructor Bill Gannon, former editorial director of Yahoo! News, flashed Platial on the screen as an example of mapping and Web 2.0 collaboration tools. Just after Hurricane Katrina, people had spontaneously begun using Platial to create maps and visualizations of damaged neighborhoods, complete with embedded media.

Di-Ann Eisnor at We Media 2007.

The very next week, I met Platial CEO Di-Ann Eisnor at the We Media conference in Miami, which I attended after my work editing the seminal We Media report by Shane Bowman and Chris Willis. When Platial closed down in 2005, Di-Ann moved on to a key role at Waze, the real-time traffic app that went out and invented Esther Dyson’s vision of “the ultimate killer app.” Waze’s combination of geolocation, passive collective actions and game elements has made it one of the premier examples of geoloco done right. Last year Di-Ann and I sat down and discussed writing a book about geoloco, but I could never pull her away from Waze to devote enough time to the project.
My involvement with the legacy of Platial came full circle last week when I sat down at La Boheme, a cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District, with Jason Wilson, who co-founded Platial with Di-Ann and CTO Jake Olsen. The word “platial,” in case you were wondering, was a mashup of places and spatial. I expected Jason to describe it as as a social mapping site, but he called it “the first social network around places.”

It started out, he said, as a kind of art project. But when they saw lots of early traction, Meetup.com co-founder and CEO Scott Heiferman convinced Jason to pursue it as a business, and Platial landed funding from Kleiner Perkins, the Omidyar Network, Ron Conway, Tim O’Reilly (of Where 2.0 fame) and adviser Clay Shirky, among others.

“What is a place? It could be as small as a corner of a table or as large as a skyscraper or neighborhood.”
— Jason Wilson

To this day, most geoloco startups are focused entirely on commercial businesses — restaurants, hotels — but Jason looks at geolocation in more profound terms. “We began thinking about, What is a place? It could be as small as a corner of a table or as large as a skyscraper or neighborhood.” A wall mural on the side of a building in the Mission could hold as much meaning to someone as an art gallery.
In the end, the mobile ad services needed to sustain a business like Platial turned out to be very slow in the making. (Muses Jason: “Why isn’t Yelp or Foursquare an ad network today? They have all those relationships with local businesses.”) Platial donated its location data to GeoCommons and closed up shop in 2010, with more than 5 million embedded maps being serviced by the site. Jason (@fekaylius on Twitter — born in 2006, by the way) is now working as founder and Experience Designer at OuterBody Labs.
Platial may have been ahead of the market, but it was on to something.
Facebook pioneered the social graph and the not-so-open graph. There’s buzz about the interest graph. And today a new graph is emerging: the place graph. What interesting things will unfold when we layer the social graph on top of the place graph, or the interest graph on top of the place graph?
Imagine meeting new people and making new friends based on similar interests that you discover because they were in the same place as you at a different time, or they shared the same experience as you in the same place at the same time. Imagine a new set of social interactions whose rules have yet to be written around forging new relationships, tracking your digital footprints, defining our own identities based on places we’ve been or aspire to visit.
“That potential is still untapped,” Jason said simply. Yes, a lot of startups are attacking the geolocation space, but no one has cracked that particular nut.
Six years ago this week, Facebook and Yelp were just getting underway, Foursquare and Instagram hadn’t come along yet and the practice of geotagging images through smartphones was just being invented. A revolution lay in wait. Platial used mapping tools as its chief metaphor in helping people ascribe meaning to the places around them. Foursquare would use check-ins. Instagram, feeds of photos. Today dozens of other startups have jumped into the fray. We’re driving the vehicles even while the roadways are still being paved a half mile ahead.
I’ll be chronicling the geolocation scene — I hope with your help — in the weeks and months ahead. It’s still early days, but we owe a hat tip to Platial for helping to chart the way forward.
What do you think holds the greatest promise for geolocation services

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The Social Marketing Tool for Savvy Networkers~By Social Buzz Club

6 Social Mistakes That Will Cost You!
Depending on who you talk to, social media is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or it’s the biggest waste of time imaginable! So why isn’t it working for everyone? Why do some people seem to hold the key to success while others are still struggling? The answer may surprise you!
Although there are many reasons why some people aren’t seeing results for their social media efforts, we’ve identified 6 common social mistakes that brands don’t even realize they are making. These will cost you BIG TIME!

1. Leaving Out a Key Piece

Have you ever worked a puzzle and found that the last piece wasn’t in the box? The end result is never as pretty as if you’d had the entire series of pieces working together to form a lovely image. Social media works in much the same way.
Very often businesses find once piece of their strategy distasteful or unfamiliar and so they decide not to do it. They are willing to do Facebook, but they won’t let people comment on their wall. They will open a Twitter account but they won’t share anyone else’s content. They want to ‘do social media’ but they aren’t willing to share anything of themselves online. These are all missing pieces to a very intricate and profitable puzzle.
Imagine trying to drive a car without oil. It might run for a bit but it won’t run well and it won’t run for long. Imagine baking a cake and refusing to use any type of sweetener. It might bake and your guests might take a bite but no one is going to ask for seconds!
Does this sound like what you’ve been experiencing with your social media strategy?

2. Trying to Do Too Much

There’s a very common phrase businesses use when they come to us to manage their social media strategies. Very often we hear, “I want to dominate the space!” Becoming the expert in your industry is an excellent goal! Becoming the only person to have a profile on every social site in existence is not!
Every social site doesn’t necessarily fit with the goals of every business. Some simply don’t support overall objectives and offer no real benefit for that individual client. If you’ve been spending time on sites that aren’t producing results for you then it’s time to reevaluate your strategy. Are your social sites getting you in front of your target audience? Are they offering you quality visibility? Are they helping you to be found in the search engines?
If your web traffic doesn’t reflect your efforts then you are throwing away valuable time and effort you could be using on more productive activities!

3. Thinking Too Small

Recently I received a call from someone who was interested in hiring my team. During the course of the conversation we followed each other on Twitter, friended each other on Facebook and connected on LinkedIn. We had a lovely conversation but ultimately we decided that they wanted a solution that we just couldn’t provide.
I had found some of the services they provided fairly intriguing so later that evening I was reviewing their website again. I decided to re-connect with them and inquire about retaining their services. Just a few hours after the call I found that I had been unfollowed and unfriended.
I decided to reach out online anyway and ask about one service in particular that they offered. They never responded. I imagine they decided that since they didn’t need one type of relationship with me that I could be of no further benefit to them. They ignored my communication. They lost a potential client. They lost someone who would have shared their content. They lost someone who may have referred further business to them. All because they were thinking too small. They didn’t consider the future benefit of a full scale business relationship with another entrepreneur. They didn’t get what they initially wanted from me and so they moved on. So did I.

4. Not Engaging In Conversations

Networking is all about building quality relationships with potential clients, partners and alliances and identifying mutually beneficial opportunities. Social networking is a two way street.
Using sites like Twitter and Facebook to blast your message to the masses is NOT an effective strategy. Identify people on each site that you would like to interact with. Reach out and say hello. Share their content. Engage them in conversation. See where this path of relationship building leads you!
If you own a business then chances are you already know how to network. Simply consider sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ tools that will allow you to network with far more people than you ever could at a physical event! Get out there and talk to someone! Listen to them too! Act on what you’ve learned and you might be surprised by what happens!

5. Ignoring Balance

Most entrepreneurs these days have had at least one social media class, attended one free social media webinar or read one or two free articles about social media strategies. They typically end up taking away one really good idea to implement.
The problem here is that one really good idea by itself is just that. It’s one really good idea. It isn’t a strategy. It isn’t a carefully crafted plan that is intended to produce the exact results you are looking for! The end result is a business that blogs three times a week but doesn’t promote their content effectively. It often also results in a business owner who chats endlessly online but doesn’t create content for their own business. In addition brands can end up using automation tools in a way that do more harm than good, using sites that don’t support their goals and connecting with large numbers of people who will never buy from them.
Too much of a good thing is never a good thing! Moderation and balance along with a complete understanding of how it all works together, go a long way towards producing quality results in a reasonable timeframe.

6. Believing You Already Know What Will Work

Of all the social mistakes you can make, this one can prove to be the worst.

• Do you think you already know how to implement a successful social media marketing strategy?
• Do you think you understand content marketing?
• Do you believe that you already know where you need to be online?
• Are you confident that you are already communicating in the right way with your target audience?
• Then why aren’t you more successful?

No matter how far along you are in your marketing efforts, there is always more you can learn. Sometimes only a nugget of new information that you implement can make you thousands of dollars. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of doing something old in a new way.

There is an old quote that says, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Are you open to new ideas? Are you willing to admit that there could be a new way of doing things that could catapult your business to the next level? Are you willing to change your preconceived notions and let go of what you’ve been doing in return for bigger and better results? If you want to see changes then you’d better be ready to make changes!
By now you may have realized there are some holes in your social media marketing plan. If you haven’t been getting the desired results, consider the items above. Are you making any of these social mistakes? Is your strategy well rounded? Does it include content creation as well as promotion? Does your strategy involve actually meeting new people online and having conversations? Do you have a strategy at all or are you just moving through the tasks?
Once you’ve identified the areas where you are challenged, the picture becomes much more clear and you can begin to identify ways to make your social media strategy complete. Results are sure to follow and soon you’ll have an endless supply of new contacts, new partnerships and new business!

Social Buzz Club
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4 Great Content Marketing Examples~By Andrew Schulkind

Looking for inspiration? Here are a handful of very different content marketing examples worth examining. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this column over the past few months, from the importance of relationships to evaluating appropriate channels to measuring your content marketing’s effectiveness. In some of those columns, we’ve looked at examples of great content marketing, but I thought it would be helpful to gather a small collection of samples for inspiration. Here’s are 4 of my favorites. These aren’t necessarily the “greatest of all time,” to borrow a phrase from Muhammad Ali; I’ve chosen them because they represent different ways to be memorable and because I hope they’ll inspire great ideas for you to use in your own content marketing.
Get People Involved
I just read this week that Hasbro has launched a campaign asking people to save their favorite Monopoly piece. Between now and February 5, 2013 you are invited to vote for the token you most want Monopoly keep. Voting takes place on the Monopoly Facebook page. As the article says, the least voted-for token “goes directly – and permanently – to jail.”
Talk about great content marketing. The campaign itself creates excitement, gets fans involved and rekindles nostalgia for the game in people who probably haven’t thought about Monopoly in a decade or more.
Even better, they’ve taken steps to capitalize on the excitement, releasing a limited edition of the game that includes all the current pieces and all the new candidates to replace the losing piece. You get a vote to save your favorite piece and a vote for your favorite candidate to replace the losing piece from five possibilities: toy robot, helicopter, cat, guitar or diamond ring.
(By the way, I came across this on Flipboard – a great tool for any content marketer or news junkie – and have to admit that this is the first time I’ve read an article in USAToday while sitting anywhere but a hotel coffee shop.)
Hasbro’s approach is worth looking to for inspiration if you’re a B2C brand with an emotional connection to your audience. (Even if that connection is somewhat dormant.) The social media aspect is worth examining for B2B audiences, too, though Facebook is probably not the channel for most B2B marketers.
Make ‘Em Laugh
I doubt there’s ever been a better way to waste time than the internet. But that doesn’t mean humor is always going to make for effective marketing. Beneath the yuks, there has to be a strong message if humor is going to further your content marketing goals. One fantastic example, and a real granddaddy of content marketing greatness, is the Blendtec video series, “Will It Blend?”
It’s not just enormously enjoyable to watch a “scientist” destroy cell phones, iPads, or Justin Bieber CDs. It also makes it plainly obvious that the Blendtec is one powerful blender. Will this work for you? Well, video is tough to beat as a delivery mechanism. People love watching video, and the search engines reward it in SEO terms.
The bigger question, though, is can you compete? No one cares whether your budget is a fraction of Blendtec’s – they just want to be entertained. If you don’t have the creativity or skills in-house and can’t afford to hire pros who do, you don’t really stand a chance. Dollar Shave Club is another firm with great a video. But unless you have a CEO who is really comfortable on camera, don’t try this at home.
Perfect Timing
Is there any better time for a welcome distraction than when you kid has scraped her knee? Band-Aids to the rescue.

1. Apply Muppets Band-Aid to the scraped knee.
2. Fire up the app on your smartphone
3. Sigh in relief as the video plays and the crying stops

Here again we have video, but we also have a really wonderful tie between a product that doesn’t generally grab many people emotionally and a product that does.
The take-away here: seek out connections like this – whether for content marketing or for your philanthropic giving – and you’ll be more likely to rise above the noise. The use of really cool tech toys, like the augmented reality used here, can also help spread the message.
Remain Relevant
If you’ve spent any time thinking about content marketing, you’ve probably heard of The Furrow from John Deere. Frequently cited as the original content marketing vehicle, it’s a publication that John Deere has made available to customers since before the turn of the century. (The turn from the 19th to the 20th …)
It’s a great example of sticking to your knitting – knowing your audience, knowing their interests, and recognizing how addressing their needs provides you with the opportunity to present your products without a hard sell. Yes, The Furrow is available online now, but it has stuck to its formula of serving an audience it knows well with information Deere knows they want.
The lesson here is to not dive into what’s hot just because it’s hot – choosing a channel should be one of the last decisions you make. First you have to you determine who you’re trying to reach, what they’re interested in, and how you can fill a need for them. A channel or channels should present itself pretty naturally once you’ve answered those questions.
I’d love to hear your favorite content marketing examples – and why they work for you.

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How to optimize your Facebook fan page SEO ~Guest post by Nathan Latka

There are a lot of rumors going around about the proper ways to optimize your Facebook fan page for the search engines (SEO). Some people suggest using keywords in the filenames of your uploads, and others say you need to have every URL you own linked to your fan page. If you’re anything like me, you don’t particularly have time to sit around and search for a tip here and a tip there, only to find out weeks later that it did you no good.
This post provides a few more tips on optimizing your Facebook page for SEO right now.

Choose the best name for your Facebook page

1This may sound like a no-brainer. However, it’s the most basic step when it comes to optimizing your brand on Facebook, and is also the most important.
There is always the temptation to stuff your fan page name with tons of keywords, like “Bob’s Bakery – Muffins, Bagels, Cookies, Breads – Catering & Events.” In actuality, having a name like this can hurt your viral growth rate inside Facebook. If you appear too spammy, your fans will be less likely to engage with your page, let alone share posts and updates with their friends. In fact, people can even hide your updates from their news feed – the horror!
Don’t be too generic, either. Facebook’s intent behind fan pages is that they represent real businesses, brands, personalities, etc. By choosing something too generic, like Travel, Sports, Fishing, etc., you run the risk of Facebook shutting down your ability to post updates and reach out to new fans.
Quick tip: The first word in your fan page title is given the most weight by Google.

Create a custom fan page vanity URL

Use a brief 140-character description for your fan page so your whole message displays in the search engine’s snippet

2After your fan page has 25 Likes, Facebook gives you the ability to create a unique URL (or usernames as Facebook calls them) for the page. Because URLs are heavily weighted by search engines, it is vital that your fan page URL reflects an aspect of your business.
If, by some misalignment in the stars, you find that another fan page has claimed your business’ name already, make sure to include what your business is about in the URL. You can check out some different username options Facebook offers before selecting your one for your fan page.

Use keywords in strategic locations on your fan page

3Just like traditional websites, keyword optimization is the most fundamental form of on-site SEO. The most important pieces to pay attention to are the About section, Mission, and Company Description, since these areas are actually pulled from your fan page as SEO elements.
Here is an example of how a search engine would index your page:
SEO Title = Your fan page name
Meta Description = Fan page name + the About section of your page
H1 = Your fan page name

To optimize your page for local searches, it is very important to include your address, city, state, and zip. For product-related searches, the Company Overview, Mission, and Products fields should be filled in with your appropriate information.
Quick tip: You may want to consider using a brief 140-character description for your fan page — perhaps similar to your website’s metadata — so your whole message displays in the search engine’s snippet.

Include your phone number and address

4As surprising as it sounds, there are a lot of businesses out there that don’t include this type of info on their fan page. As a majority of your sales may be from online traffic, it can appear to be not quite so important for you to include. But remember, indexing your brand for local search results is crucial to growing your Facebook page.
In addition, Google places higher importance on pages with specific information like your business’s phone number and address. So, pages that include this type of data can effectively increase your brand’s overall SEO.

Backlink to your fan page on existing channels

5The more inbound links to your page, the more authoritative your page is according to Google, and you will be ranked higher. That is why it is very important to bloggers when they have their content linked to from other websites, blogs, etc.
This same principle applies to your Facebook fan page. So, where it is appropriate, include a link to your fan page from your other digital channels, like your website, blog, and Twitter profile.

Optimize Facebook fan page status updates

6When posting updates to your Facebook wall, remember that the first 18 characters of a Facebook post serve as the meta description. So, take advantage of the option when Facebook prompts you to “Write something…” since that text will be considered the SEO title for that update. Including direct links to your small business website in your updates is also a good practice to follow.

Quick tip: Just like your fan page’s name, Google places a higher importance on the first word of your update, so you may want to consider making that a keyword.

SEO for Facebook Notes

7Facebook Notes is something that has been underutilized. When used appropriately, Facebook Notes can provide your fan page with an effective way at increasing your overall SEO. The SEO elements pulled in from Facebook Notes are:
SEO Title = the title of your note
Meta data = Your fan page name wrote a note titled, your note’s title
Facebook Notes gives your page the ability to create multiple “pages” underneath the main fan page. Notes are also a good way to expand on special offers or events that your business is hosting and have them indexed in search engines.
(A note about Notes: Facebook Notes were sort of put out to pasture in late 2001, early 2012 with the advent of Timeline and the new rule that status updates can run as long as 63,206 characters, or about 9,000 words. They’re still there; just follow this convention: https://www.facebook.com/jdlasica/notes)

Bottom line for Facebook fan page SEO

Don’t forget that the overarching objective of Facebook SEO is adding to the value of your overall brand. It is important to pay attention to the comparison between raw traffic and engagement level.
While using the methods above can help boost your search engine results page ranking, the most crucial part is that it coincides with an awesome product and incredible engagement to grow your following.


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How to Apply Blush for all Skin Types & Tones

Blush helps to make your beautiful face glow and look alive. Application is fairly straightforward but it's important to get it right to avoid applying too much regardless of the look you are after.
Here are some basic tips: Select a shade of blush according to your skin and hair color:

• Blond and ginger hair with olive complexion - blush of oranges tones.
• Dark and auburn haired with fair complexion - pastel blush, called powdered.
• Pale or grey skin - salmon, coral or pink blush. brown blush₁

Make sure blush and lipstick are similar in color value. That is, even if you are going light on the lips and heavy on the cheeks or vice versa, wear corals with corals, etc.

Let's get started: Here's Jennifer Goodwin w/ a pinch cheek color & application.

• Use a Kabuki Brush or Blush Brush and get an even amount of blush in the bristles.
• Tap Excess.

pic from Motives

• Then, smile gentle use a circular motion around the cheek area that is elevated (the smile)

For a longer stroke of the blush

• Smile gently and sweep the brush in a U shape along your cheek bone and out to your temple. Make sure you blend the blush with the rest of your makeup to ensure a natural look.

For very fair skin I recommend either light shade of pink ex. Flushed or for a more natural look, Naughty. Motives Press Blush comes in a wide variety of shades so you can find a shade that works best for you.

For oily skin, our press blushes works well on all types of skin. However, on especially humid days you may have to reapply your blush just once.

For dry skin , a cream blush is great! For even better results, combine cream and powder together. "It helps my blush stay on longer and looks more luminous," said makeup artist Laura Mercier in O Magazine. Keep in mind stains -- great for well-moisturized skin, not dry skin -- tend to dry very fast so blend well and fast.

For combination skin, stay with a powder press blush for best results.

If you use a concealer and foundation, apply your concealer than foundation and finish with your blush. Make sure to blend as you go to create a natural and even look. When you’re satisfied with your coloring, dust Motives Translucent Loose Powder over your entire face to set your look and keep it looking fresh all day.


As a final touch, and to set your makeup for the day try a makeup finisher as your final step!

There you have it. One of my favorite motto's is 'basics are best' and here you have it. What's your favorite way of wearing as well as shade of color?

 

 

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Something Beautiful

Makeup cosmetics beauty blog learn beauty secrets and techniques on makeup applications, skin care concerns, fashion trends and product reviews. See newest trends in eye shadow colors and eye shadow creams, blushes, eyeliners and more. We welcome articles and comments relevant to our discussion on Something Beautiful blog.

Is social media all the market research you need?~Andrea Goldberg

In Mike Moran’s recent post, he pointed out that digital marketing is more about understanding marketing than it is about being a technology expert. I could not agree more. One certainly needs to understand the basics of marketing to be successful in digital marketing. But, I would like to take this argument even further, understanding marketing is necessary but not sufficient. It is all about understanding customers and their wants, needs and values. Market research rocks!
In the fast-paced world we live in, carefully constructed research that focuses on identifying customer underlying needs and enables segmentation has largely fallen out of favor. In our service economy, it is very easy to create new offerings and use digital media to establish a brand, put out messages, create buzz, etc. The cost of entry is minimal and digital marketers have gotten good at using sophisticated tactics to reach their targets. But, I am concerned that we sometimes lose sight of why things fail. Even the most innovative products and the most sophisticated digital marketing campaigns will fall short if at the end of the day they do not satisfy some basic or perceived need or are out of tune with prevailing norms and values. Yes, we can tune in and listen to the chatter. But do we really understand what our clients need? And do we take the time to do post mortems and understand what went wrong when we do not succeed? Or, as I suspect, do we simply go on to the next new thing?
As we move further into a world where digital has replaced paper and online search terms have replaced 30 second TV ads, have we forgotten some of the basics? It we only listen to the on-line chatter might we miss the opportunity to fulfill desires that are not expressed? And, are we failing to get the kind of insights or feedback we need?
At the end of the day, I think it is about balance. I have seen companies eliminate brand tracking and customer loyalty studies because they believe they can find out what they need online. Web analytics are important tools, but they do not necessarily tell us why. Is a customer that reads your blog or clicks on your site necessarily a loyal customer? The digital world is full of metrics and on-line behavior tracking. What motivates that behavior is a little more difficult to discern.
So, while I am not advocating that everything be learned through one-way mirrors or phone-based surveys, I do propose that the right tools be employed to gain insights about current and potential clients. The best of all worlds might be to pair the two types of data so that one can understand how online behaviors correlate with attitudes, satisfaction and loyalty. In this way, one could, for example, understand the behavioral pattern of customers who are considering defection and develop a strategy to prevent them from departing. Too often, we act only after they have already gone when it is too late.
Insights can come from online tools and communities. But they can also come from analyzing data by segment or from simply asking why. And, while old-fashioned, surveys, ideation sessions and focus groups may actually turn out be good investments, “Build it and they will come” might work well in the movies, but it never was a great marketing concept!

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Does your Internet marketing training make you feel dumb?~By Mike Moran

I have been hearing from a lot of people on my post from Wednesday on new ways to train your team in digital marketing. I’ve gotten great feedback, but there was one comment that struck a nerve, when someone asked if anything about marketing and sales is the same as it was back before the InterWebs. I understand why people ask that question and I feel compelled to give an answer that is not the normal one for a digital marketing trainer. Most things are not any different than they were before. Most of what you knew then is still true. Marketing is still marketing.
I know, I know. Heretic! Blasphemer! I know that I am supposed to be this brandy-new social media guy who can introduce you to the brave new world. I mean, the more new and the scarier it is, the more you need the training, right? If I can scare you until you wet yourself then you’ll just have to hire me. At least that is how the thinking seems to go.
There are a couple of problems with that approach. One is that it isn’t exactly true. The other is that it isn’t very helpful to someone trying to adapt to all the changes.
You see, the dirty little secret of Internet marketing trainers is that Internet marketing is way more about marketing than about the Internet. I’ll prove it to you. If I gave you a choice for your next digital marketing czar–you can pick either an expert on the Internet or an expert on marketing, who do you want? As an ex-IT guy, I mean this kindly, but DON’T TAKE THE TECHNOLOGY GEEK.
Internet marketing isn’t about the Internet any more than radio advertising needs someone who understands the gigahertz of the FM band. Or the intricacies of audio recording. I’m not saying that such knowledge is useless–what I know about how search engines work clearly helps me in search marketing–but it is less important than understanding why customers search and what they are looking for.
And marketers already know a lot of what they need, if people would only explain it better. For example, search keywords are market segments. Yes, I know that the traditional marketer might not see that right away, but when I spend some time explaining it, then suddenly they know a dozen things they can do–they can see which keywords have the most loyal customers or the highest conversion rate or the highest order size. The reason they can quickly do that is because they already know how to compare market segments, so once they know what keywords are, then they can apply what they already know.
I’ve trained direct marketers in digital marketing in about three days. These people walk into class thinking they are dinosaurs and walk out ready to run rings around people who might be really good at Facebook but they don’t really understand how to measure response to a marketing message and what to do about it.
Sales people tell me they don’t know how to use social media to sell. Then I show them that every time their customer asks a question, they have a blog post. They can communicate with customers on LinkedIn every day without being annoying. And they get it.
I hope there isn’t anyone out there feeling defeated and old because they just don’t get this Internet stuff. I’m telling you that if you know marketing that you can know Internet marketing. You just need it explained based on what you know already, instead of being the brave new world. It ain’t.


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