This week's post has some great informative data on the state of the internet today and its usage over time, a game that puts your twitter stats to use, a creative way to open marketers' eyes to content marketing and something we truly thought we'd never see.

Intrigued? Read on.

From Captains of Industry, an innovative contest which should hopefully help some marketers realize that their content is a little lacking. The Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge is over now, but if you go to the website you can see a video with some of the entries. Should your content have been entered in the challenge?

Believe it or not there is now an iPhone game called  Tweet Defense  which combines social media and mobile gaming. The object of the game is to build up defenses and kill zombies and it uses your twitter stats (number of followers, friends tweets etc.) to up your power in the game.

A study about the internet done by the BBC which has some great facts including one which states that 4 out of 5 people believe the internet is a fundamental right and an interactive graphic showing the change in internet usage over time.

And finally, as promised, a warning that we never thought we would need to see.

Have a great weekend!


image by FedeSK8

Alright, it's Friday again and so it's time for the latest installment of  our Web Marketing Digest series. This week we have a video on the state of the internet today, a few stats about the Olympics (we are located in Vancouver after all), the best custom 404 page we've ever seen and for all our readers looking for something more informative than entertaining, a great article on conversion optimization. Here they are:

If you like video representations of facts, you'll love this video on the state of the internet today made by JESS3. Here are just a few of the facts the video shows:

• 1.73 Billion internet users worldwide
• 90 trillion emails sent in 2009
• 81% of the emails sent were spam

We don't want to ruin the surprise, so you'll have to check out the video to learn the rest.

Want to learn which Olympic athletes from N. America had the most online buzz surrounding them? This report from Neilsen shows the internet buzz surrounding different Olympic athletes who won gold, and the most talked about people might surprise you!

I know it's hard to believe, but 404 error pages can be cool! Don't believe me? Check out this custom 404 page from imjustcreative and tell me that it's not the best one you've ever seen.

As promised, here is a great article, The Five Rings of Conversion Optimization, from Search Engine Land on how conversion optimization involves more than just your website.

Have a great weekend!

image by christianyves

During the course of our work week it's not uncommon for our marketing team to come across blog posts, websites and other digital assets that catch our attention that we'd like to share with our readers. To that end, today marks the beginning of Marqui's Web Marketing Digest series which will highlight the interesting things we come across each week and will be posted every Friday.

Here are some of the interesting tidbits we discovered on the web this week and wanted to share:

A fabulous article from Times Higher Education on content management and higher education. This post does a great job of emphasizing the pains that many higher education institutions face when it comes to managing their website.

A fun email marketing knowledge test. How email savvy are you? Take this test and find out (by the way our score was 100%, not that we're bragging).

For all those people who love social media and baking, there is now a twitter device to keep you updated on all the newest baked goods from your local bakery. Baker Tweet is a bakery-safe box through which busy bakers can tweet directly to their followers about their oven-fresh goods. Not only is Baker Tweet a fantastic way to connect with audiences--it's yummy as well!

An informative, and cute, video on proper e-book creation from Aptara. The video covers the steps in creating an e-book from start to finish in 2 minutes.

Do you have the characteristics of a good blogger? Check out this post on Techipedia to see if you fit the bill.

Have a great weekend!

Welcome to our new website which now includes a brand new web marketing blog. Marqui has a long and colorful history of blogging, but we wanted to start fresh with with a new look and a renewed focus on all things web marketing.

Our web marketing blog is brought to you by our marketing, product and consulting team to share ideas, best practices and trends from the world of web marketing.

We aim to cover a broad array of topics relating to web marketing including:

•  Content management
• Content creation strategies
• Conversion optimization
• Search Engine Optimization
• Email marketing
• Lead nurturing and management
• Lead scoring
• Anything else that seems interesting and relevant

You might be interested to know that here at Marqui we eat our own dog food. Every thing you see on our website and the web marketing blog have been been created and managed by our team using Marqui's Web Marketing Complete product.

We hope you like what you see and find our content useful. We'd love to hear from you about what you like, what you disagree with, and what else you'd like to get us thinking (and blogging) about.

Richard
VP Marketing, Marqui