Stompernet Live 8 Reading List - What Do the Experts Read

Hello all who attended the Stompernet Live conference or who are interested in finding out what has inspired some of the world's top speakers.

I have been to a number of Stompernet conferences and have always made a note of the reading list. I have found this reading list invaluable & I thought you would do too.

The list isn't complete as I could only be in one place at one time & so I welcome your comments and additions.

Joe Polish:

Jo's story started with the world of offline marketing and charted his life and success as a marketer following turbulent periods of addiction in his late teens. The book he recomended says as much about addiction to ilicit substances as to our addiction to practices and habits that we know are harmful to ourselves, our attitudes and our business.

Change or Die - Alan Deutschman

On the extreme difficulty of changing your habits & engrained behaviours

Dan Thies:

Dan delivered a talk on the 6 things you must know to survive in Internet marketing. The books he recommended related to copywriting, an often neglected part of eCommerce and conversion that can make a significant difference to your bottom line.

Web Copy that sells - Maria Veloso

Catalog Copy that Sells - HG Lewis

Lisa Lang:

Lisa & Brad Falon spoke on the importance of using the Theory of Constraints in developing your business. The greater the throughput, the more money you can make and the better your company is positioned to be able to offer what the competition cannot. Books relating to Brad & Lisa's talks are below:

The Goal - Eli Goldratt

The first of the Theory of Constraints books. It's written as a novel & is very easy to absorb. It's a brilliant & through-provoking read that provides all sorts of excellent analogies for the Theory of Constraints.

It's Not Luck - Eli Goldratt

The follow-up to The Goal. This books takes the thinking of The Goal to the next level. It is again written as a novel and is extremely engaging.

The Critical Chain - Eli Goldratt

This book applies the Theory of Constraints to project management and is essential for anyone who wishes to plan and execute any kind of project in a way that will save them time or money. Whether you're designing & building a website, or working on a planned expansion for your business, this is a great read.

Brad Fallon:

Brad's talk was a fairly high-level analysis of business and business practices. As well as talking aobut the Theory of Constraints, brad also mentioned the following books:

Sway: The irresistable Pull of Irrational Marketing - Ori Brafman

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions - Dan Ariely

The Only 3 Questions that Count - Ken Fisher

Twitter in Denial of Service Attack

For those of you who searched for Twitter today & found that it wasn't there, the site was taken down by a denial of service (or DDOS) attack.

"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," said company co-founder Biz Stone on the company's blog.

It is estimated that there are over 45 million users of Twitter, making the service on of critical importance for people, businesses and Internet Marketing companies alike.

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users." said Stone.

UPDATE:

The Register reports that the attack was the result of a JoeJob spamming campaign.Joejobs are spam messages that are designed not to push Viagra but to induce someone to click on a link in the hopes of harming the site being linked to. Essentially, millions of people get an email that says something benign like "Please click the link to my blog"; the link points to Twitter rather than the blog & people clicking on it are not aware of the harm that they're causing.

Increase your Twitter following

There are myriad tools on the market that can increase your Twitter following. Some of these tools are better than others, some are free & some cost a lot of money.St James Systems have tested a large number of Twitter tools over the last 12 months with varying degrees of success. Many were excellent but only one could tick all the boxes. This was Tweet Adder.

The features that we are after as Internet marketers may well be a useful benchmark for those who are looking to build their Twitter profile & following. We are particularly interested in the following:

• The ability to use multiple accounts quickly and simply
• The ability to follow users who have mentioned a particular keyword or phrase in their tweets
• The ability to follow users who mention keywords in their biography
• Follow people within a certain distance of a geographical location
• Automate the process of following people who are relevant
• See statistics on the effects of this automated following in order to find the most successful following techniques over time.
• To cease following when the following/followers ratio gets too high.
• Automatically unfollow.
• Maintain a 'Safelist' of users who are never to be unfollowed.
• Send posts.
• Schedule posts.

The results of using TweetAdder were impressive and the speed at which a following could be built up, when compared to the risk that the user was taking in following unrelated people was exceptional.

St James Systems were able to build up a following of 2,623 followers in under 2 months with an 18.3% conversion rate of following to followers.

For more information, visit the TweetAdder site: www.TweetAdder.com

Peterborough Cathedral Website Live

St James Systems have just launched the new Peterborough Cathedral website. The site, which is the largest Cathedral website in the UK, has been a labour of love and a test of project management skills. 12 months went into planning and developing a site that aimed to showcase all that the Cathedral has to offer in a way that was not bamboozling to visitors.

The aim of the site is to attract visitors and to provide useful information to tourists and regulars alike.

The new website is built using a content management system that allows Cathedral staff to create and manage their own content, news articles, images, news and press releases.

We feel that the site showcases our web design skills and shows our ability to manage large and complex projects.

The site can be viewed here: www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk