I don’t know exactly who did the study… but I remember hearing a statistic one time that working in an advertising agency is one of the world’s most stressful occupations. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with that, but I’m pretty sure that those working in any type of advertising agency won’t disagree.

At ProspectMX, we try to do a variety of activities to counter balance the stress of working for one of the busiest web marketing companies around. And almost all of us have different things we do to relieve stress.

Some of us carry Nerf guns around the building and shoot darts at co-workers. Some of us wear t-shirts with funny one-liners that only geeks can enjoy.

And some of us, well… some of us smash pies in the face of our bosses.

Last week, as the culmination of a series of events and activities that raised over $1600 for March of Dimes, the co-founders of ProspectMX donned trash bags and had all of their employees gather outside during a lunch break for an especially sweet event.

Three lucky employees got to live the dream with an opportunity to “pie” Rory Wilfong, Steve Young, and Dave Conklin. And it was all done in the name of raising money for March of Dimes.

Luckily, we caught the event on film…

Rory, Steve, and Dave (along with COO John Fraunfelter, Sales Manager Jim Bradford and Customer Success Specialist Mike King of a real estate marketing company) got pied by individuals who placed the highest bid on a pie during a week long silent auction fundraiser held for company employees in April. All funds raised during the silent auction were given to March of Dimes.

All proceeds raised and donated to the March of Dimes helps fund research and efforts to reduce premature births, birth defects, and infant mortality. To date, ProspectMX has helped raise over $1600 to benefit the March for Babies campaign.

Normally, we keep the commentary on our blog related to the microcosm of internet marketing and how it can help your business succeed. Sometimes, however, a cause is too good to pass up mentioning. Esbenshade’s, a garden center and greenhouse located in Litiz, PA - is teaming up with Youth with a Mission International (YWAM) to provide these temporary houses to the homeless in Haiti.

What Are Hoop Houses?

Hoop houses are low cost, easy to assemble greenhouses. To simply explain it, a hoop house is a greenhouse with a plastic roof draped over plastic piping. The hoop houses Esbenshade’s has sent to Haiti are pre-fabricated and customized at the company’s greenhouse.

According to the team at Esbenshade’s, nearly one million temporary homes are needed to shelter the homeless earthquake survivors in Haiti. To help, they have designed and constructed 14- x 16-foot “hoop houses” that can provide a temporary home for a family of up to five.

How Esbenshade’s Is Helping Haiti

Two hundred homes left a Florida port on Monday. When the houses arrived at the port of St. Marc in Haiti, a team of local YWAM personnel and construction volunteers from the Lancaster-area met the shipment. In total, YWAM plans on constructing 100 homes per acre - in total providing about 1,000 homes for Haiti’s homeless.

Esbenshade’s would greatly appreciate any financial contributions from the public to help continue the Hoop Houses for Haiti effort. The cost for one home (including materials and shipping) is around $300. Anyone in the Lancaster-area who is interested in volunteering their time and energy to assemble the hoop house materials in Litiz are also appreciated. Of course, volunteers are also in high demand in Haiti - for hoop house assembly and a variety of other causes.

Anyone looking for more information on Esbenshade’s Hoop Houses for Haiti program should call 717.626.7007 or visit Esbenshades.com.

Over the last few weeks, we have been meeting several people on the internet marketing public speaking scene. Since nearly every internet marketing speaker has a slightly different approach to how they tackle the process of online promotions, we wanted to take the time and pick the brains of some of the experts we’ve met.

The first internet marketing speaker we had the chance to sit down with was Michael Temple. Below is the transcript of our awesome conversation.

Q: Why did you get into Internet marketing?
A: I had a bit of a rough trip through the dot com bubble back in the late 90s and early 2000. I worked for a dot com that had a very good product and great concept, one of the few that was proven successful in the long term. Unfortunately we didn’t market very well and we ended up going under from lack of capital as so many other dot com companies did during that time. When the company failed like so many others my stock options became worthless and I lost a lot of money. I vowed I would learn everything I could about Internet marketing and the next company or project I was involved in would not make the same mistakes. I believe I have kept that promise I made to myself so long ago and I believe my clients all benefit everyday from my hard won experience.

Q: What types of projects and work do you do now?
A: The aspect of Internet marketing I find so fascinating is how much effect it has on almost every industry and company. I have never found a company that couldn’t benefit from doing some type of marketing online. Because of that philosophy I have been very fortunate and been able to work with companies in a variety of industries. I help clients in B2B set up lead generation online systems, eCommerce for B2C firms, and a variety of other projects like copywriting and search engine optimization. I am also a passionate entrepreneur so I spend a lot of time working on my own projects and web sites. I now have several different web site projects that earn an income for me and I am constantly tweaking them to make them better. Finally, I travel the country working as an Internet marketing speaker and training companies and associations how to use Internet marketing to build up their businesses.

Q: What do you think makes you different as an Internet marketing consultant?
A: Two things, first, I am not afraid to talk about and learn from my failures. I doubt there is a marketing person alive who doesn’t have failures. Unfortunately too many people are afraid to talk about or acknowledge those failures, which is unfortunate because I almost believe you learn more from them than your successes. My dot com failure back in early 2000 was big learning experience for me and while I certainly didn’t have control of the entire company I did still learn from that failure. Second, I am an entrepreneur out doing my own projects every day. The strategies and ideas I provide to my consulting and speaking clients are ideas I have tried with my own money and time. I didn’t just read about them on web site or in a book. I have actually tried and continue to use the strategies that are most effective. In addition, I am an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Toledo and have the opportunity to do a lot of research and writing in my role with the University, which my clients get the advantage of.

Q: What great insight can you share with your readers?
A: Being successful in Internet marketing is about marketing – not fancy technology. I think one of the critical mistakes made during the dot com era was that people focused too much on creating marvelous technological advances without asking the fundamental question of who will buy this and why? I still see it today. Too many web developers focus on creating fantastic web sites that nobody ever visits. The technology is wonderful, but it is like building a 3D Imax Theatre on a dirt road, nobody will ever find it. You have to answer the fundamental marketing questions before you decide which technology tools to use. Technology is a tool, nothing more. It is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

Q: Can you give our readers a good tip on how to improve their marketing prowess on the web?
A: Yes, focus on the concept of direct marketing. Direct marketing involves writing powerful copy and persuading someone to take action. It is measurable and causes the proverbial cash register to ring. Remember nothing happens in business until somebody buys something so focus on the one area of marketing that has consistently produced money making results for decades and that is direct marketing tools and strategies.

About Michael
Michael Temple is an Internet marketing consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur. In addition to his consulting practice Michael also is a professor of marketing for University of Toledo teaching Internet and direct marketing to the next generation of marketers. He is the owner of several different businesses both on and off the web and is passionate about helping his clients achieve measurable and effective marketing results. If you need a consultant or a speaker for your next event you can learn more by visiting his web site at http://www.web2gold.com.

Tomorrow, December 2, ProspectMX is partnering with the League of Lancaster Bicyclists (LLB) to gather toy donations for a local non-profit group. This blog post was written by Jonathan Bentz - jonathanbentz.gooruze.com.

The League of Lancaster Bicyclists will be hosting a ride in Quarryville, PA to raise awareness for the local toy drive. The world headquarters of ProspectMX will serve as a toy drop-off destination. Good’s Store in Quarryville will also serve as a drop off location.

ProspectMX and the LLB need your help. The local non-profit is around 100 toys short from their toy goal for area children in need. If the organization doesn’t acquire its number of toys, THEN THE KIDS DON’T GET TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS!

How you can help:

1. Stop by one of the many area retailers that sells toys and pick one up.
2. Get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside as you purchase your toy.
3. Drive from area retailer to ProspectMX World Headquarters to drop your toy off.

Here’s ProspectMX’s address:

ProspectMX
221 Rohrerstown Road
Lancaster, PA 17603

Lancaster-Area Small Business Owners And Marketing Pros, Listen Up!

As an added bonus to you for helping ProspectMX make dreams come true this holiday season, stop by our offices and you can receive a FREE website consultation with one of our knowledgeable internet marketing consultants. Its the least we can do to show you how much we appreciate your generosity this holiday season.

For more information on the bike ride and toy collection, happening this Wednesday from 9am - 6pm, please give me a call at 717.406.1884. You can also hit me (@jonathanbentz) or Dave Conklin (@prospectmx) on Twitter and we’ll get you all the details.

Thanks in advance for your help this holiday season - we really appreciate it!

I’ve been reading a lot of bloggers lately hyping up this new link building service called Tynt. According to a quick Google Blog Search, 1,083 mentions of Tynt have come up over the last 7 days. It is also getting enough buzz across the innerwebs that a client was savvy enough to email me about it this morning.

Allegedly, Tynt is a cool service for bloggers and other creators of written web content. Tynt provides a piece of Javascript that creates a backlink to your blog post or site when your content is copied and pasted by a third party into a content editor.

Below is an example of Tynt at work. Thanks to Patrick Altoft of Branded3 for noticing that the Daily Mail in the UK uses it, and blogging about it on BlogStorm. He wrote a great post that helped alert me to Tynt. His post was also so good that I impulsively scrolled my mouse over his text, hit “CTRL + C” on my keyboard, and hit “CTRL + V” on this blog post.

Tynt At Work

Tynt Insight monitors copy and paste behavior on billions of page loads per month across hundreds of thousands of web sites . Our data shows that up to 6% of page loads results in a user copying content! On a site that has 20 million page views per month – cont

Source: Add links when people cut and paste your content with Tynt

My Reaction To Tynt

Wait a second… where’s the link?!?!

When Tynt works its magic, the title of Patrick’s blog post on BlogStorm (Add links when people cut and paste your content with Tynt) should have been hyperlinked directly to his post. After all, I directly copied and pasted his content into my WordPress editor - no Jedi mind tricks here.

So… where’s the link?

The Problem With Tynt

Turns out Tynt’s Javascript code inserts the link to your blog post the second someone copies and pastes your information into a WYSIWYG text editor.

In contrast, I use an HTML editor to create my blog posts, rendering Tynt’s magic useless. Also, because of the way Tynt’s script works, their attributions are very easy to remove. A novice web plagiarizer can easily take them out of a post once they have copied and pasted your content.

Tynt is promoted as a “provider of SEO benefits by generating more links back to your content that are search engine visible.” Read more: http://www.tynt.com/#ixzz0XnNAbeTL

See - even when HTTP code is used for link placement, it is still ineffective.

Is Tynt worth adding to your site to be an assistant to your link building efforts? Sure. But will it actually produce a quantity of links for you? No.

I get that bloggers and news sites are tired of having sites steal their content, and I 100% agree with your gripes. As an alternative to using Tynt for building links when your content is stolen, I would personally recommend WordPress users check out Joost de Valk’s RSS Footer Plugin.

After reading over Michael Gray’s testing with this plugin, the RSS Footer Plugin seems much more effective at putting content bandits to work for your link building efforts than Tynt.