Performance Marketing Tips

Webmaster Radio – A Look Back and a Look Forward

Greg M — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:41:05 +0000

It’s that time of the year when we’re temped to look back at year that was and ponder what’s in store for 2010 – and beyond. A number of the shows on Webmaster radio have done just that with their podcasts. Here are a handful of podcasts that sum up the digital landscape of 2009 and prognosticate the future of interactive.

Webcology – Search Year in Review

SEM Synergy – How Has Search Changed in 2009

Inboxed – SEO, Social Media, and Affiliate Marketing Trends for 2010

Mobile Presence – Mobile Marketing Trends for 2010

foursquare – New Mobile App Bridges Social Media and Local Advertising

Greg M — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:28:49 +0000

Foursquare is a new mobile app that a co-worker pointed out to me that has some great applications for a few of our customers. This is a potential traffic driving tool for all local businesses and offers exceptional impact for those with multiple locations or franchises.

Once the foursquare app is installed, users will “check-in” to various places like restaurants, bars, events, etc. and their circle of friends will be notified. Users can then recommend places and upon check-in will unlock tips like menu recommendations. Users earn points which allow them to level up with new badges. If you’ve visited a place more than anyone else you are bestowed with the honor of Mayor – until someone knocks you off the top spot.

Marketers can offer foursquare only specials that users can unlock at check-in. Foursquare also offers an API to develop ways to check-in or visualize foursquare data.

Currently, foursquare is available for the iPhone and Android with a Blackberry app in the works. Bummer because I have an ol’ fashion “Windows powered mobile device” (and my contract is up in 283 days but who’s counting).

Visit foursquare.com to sign up and learn more.

New FTC Guidelines Raise Concerns for Social Marketers

Greg M — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:44:17 +0000

This past December 1st, new FTC guidelines we enacted which have the potential to greatly impact social marketing and affiliate marketers. The new FTC guidelines entitled “Guide Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” require social marketers to disclose if they are compensated in any way when discussing a product. This could include receiving a product or service for free.

The new FTC guidelines are squarely aimed at bloggers, forum posts, Twitter and Facebook platforms. The FTC is trying to enforce transparency if messages by the author could be believed to be that of a sponsor even if the author and sponsor have identical points of view.

While compliance seems to be reasonably non-intrusive, this does appear to be a shift in standards that have been widely allowed in traditional media for years. Enforcement on the other hand presents many challenges. How can anyone possibly monitor all of the social media touch points? On one podcast that I recently listened to, an affiliate marketing expert pondered the opportunity for free publicity. What if your post becomes the case that goes all the way to The Supreme Court? Somewhere a marketer and lawyer are licking their chops.

Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing

Greg M — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:22:30 +0000

This is a FREE PDF guide that I wrote to provide a little more of a framework to some of my internet marketing thoughts.

The Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing was written to be an actionable, ‘how to’ guide to help marketers and business people. Whether you’re a client-side, agency-side, with a Fortune 500 Company or a startup I’ve included strategies that you can apply to improve your internet marketing program starting today.

Clearly this is much more than a bunch of disjointed blog posts but in an effort to get something up quickly the Strategy Guide to Internet Marketing lacks a more robust framework – to an extent. I do cover specific ways to integrate Strategy, Optimization and Communication. Definitely check out the sections most important to you, but try to find something that you can apply right away!

Google – Now with Personalized Feed Search Goodness

Greg M — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:45:10 +0000

Over the past 2 and a half years Google has fine tuned it’s algorithm around Universal Search. In the normal SERPS (search engine results page) Google shows news, images, local listing, videos and more blended in with its normal results.

Recently Google has started to roll out its new algorithm which includes 2 primary features – Personalized Search and Real Time search. Personalized Search launched last week and means that Google will attempt to learn your preferences over time and adjust it’s SERPs on an individual basis. This has the promise of much better results for the user, however as a search marketer I have no idea how will track individually targeted keyword rankings. My guess is that will have to focus on referring keywords at a site level rather than the SERPs.

The second is Real Time search which is coming online this week. Google will now include a Feed Box along with its other Universal Search listings. The Feed Box will contain the latest updates from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I was listening to a podcast with Bruce Clay a few weeks back and they understandably had significant concerns for the impact this could have on brands – this looks like a big fat wait and see!

Digital Strategy Guide, The Honey Pot, Now Live!

Greg M — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:47:09 +0000

Dan Kurani, the president of Kurani Interactive, has written a digital strategy guide that is available to read for free online. The Honey Pot is a comprehensive guide to interactive marketing, digital media trends and agency insights from Dan’s 10 years of running an interactive agency.

I had the pleasure to help edit the book and after reading it cover to cover I was impressed with the amount of ground covered in 118 pages. At its core The Honey Pot is about how to leverage digital strategies to develop a pull marketing strategy for your brand. However, it’s much more than that ad nearly every aspect of the interactive space is delved into.

Feel free to read the ebook for free at the website TheHoneyPotBook.com or you can download the PDF version of the digital strategy ebook for free.

Net Neutrality Debate Heating Up in Congress

Greg M — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:20:46 +0000

A quick summary of Net Neutrality is that no content on the web should be given preferential treatment by the owners of the pipes, wires, switches, ISPs, etc. Net Neutrality would prevent someone like ATT from speeding up (prioritizing) the delivery of content through their pipes based on say an advertising deal. For example, ATT would get ‘free’ advertising space on ESPN if they gave priority to Disney content.

While listening to the October 29th podcast of Webcology on Webmaster radio the hosts talked about some of Google’s new offerings and the potential implications of Net Neutrality. When one services owns such a commanding share of the web it begs the question – Do we also need Google Neutrality?

Here are some resources for Net Neutrality education and action.

Webcology 10/29 Pocast

Save the Internet Petition – Sign Up Now!

Save the Internet Video on YouTube

Foxy SEO Tool, Firefox’s Growing SEO Add-On

Greg M — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:06:43 +0000

I installed Foxy SEO last week to help with search optimization and analysis. While I haven’t tapped it’s full potential I have been using it quite a bit to check backlinks and Google Pagerank. Aside from the usual search engines (Yahoo!, bing, Ask), it includes menu options for directories like the Yahoo! Directory and dmoz, research tools like Alexa and Compete, and social media options like Twitter, digg, Yahoo! Answers and more.

Foxy SEO Tool has some helpful page analysis tools which analyzes keyword density, looks for 404 errors, meta tags, robot.txt files and sitemaps.

While Foxy SEO has been out for just over a year it looks like most of the meat was added in 2009. As such I think it’s still a bit of a work in progress but if you’re an SEO professional it’s worth checking out.

The Book of Odds, by Kurani Interactive, Launches tomorrow!

Greg M — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:44:25 +0000

Since I have a number of friends over at Kurani Interactive, I’ve been hearing about the Book of Odds for some time now. I actually had a demo a few weeks ago while it was in user testing and really had a lot of fun with site. The Book of Odds presents ‘the odds of everyday life’ in a compelling way.

The Visual Browse tool (shown above) is essentially a very cool form of data visualization. Select your keywords and related odds appear to the right. The site also contains articles written by the folks at the Book of Odds, which helps tie together some related themes.

Not long ago I made a post about Freakonomics and today found out that they are on the Book of Odds bandwagon too. Check out Ryan Hagen’s introduction of the Book of Odds on the Freakonomics blog at the NY Times. If the Book of Odds team (including Kurani Interactive) could join up with Freakonomics I think I’d think we’d see a complete revolution on the use of data and data visualization.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Freakonomics on Amazon or setup a Free account on the Book of Odds website.

Interview: Analytics Tool Getting a Refresh with Crazzy Egg 2.0

Greg M — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:34:32 +0000

A few weeks back I talked about Crazy Egg’s Confetti as a great analytics tool for data visualization and thought it worth some follow up. Amee over at Crazy Egg came through with the inside scope on Crazy Egg 2.0 as well as some insights on data visualization. To the left is the new drop down menu – some nice new options.

PMT – How have you seen the need for data visualization change/evolve in recent years?

CE - Because of the vast amount of data out there, it can be hard for companies to comprehend the data. Visualizations that provide an insight about users and more importantly actionable data, make it easier for companies to understand their data.
Similar to what some analytics companies are doing now, I think over the next few years companies are going to concentrate and create more useful visuals and not just pretty ones.

PMT – How do data visualization tools fit with typical analytics platforms like Omniture? What’s the best way to create synergy between the two?

CE – Well, they help you understand the data in a different way. Some people are visual while others prefer crunching numbers. I think analytics companies are going to have to meet the needs of both type of users.

PMT – What’s new with the upcoming Confetti release?

CE – The best way to create a synergy is through deep integration. This way the user experience is seamless.
Crazy Egg 2.0:
• Completely rewritten from the ground up
• Improved stability, performance, and reliability throughout the whole system
• Reports are always available
• Reports load much quicker
• Improved tracking reliability
• Improved tracking accuracy
• Added many more dimensions of data to Confetti and Overlay, including custom user variables
• Higher-resolution heatmaps
• New snapshot creation UI
• Ability to fine-tune URL matching URLs for snapshots
• Ability to edit running tests
• Improved screenshots (better font rendering)
• Improved error handling and messaging
• Better tools for our users to diagnose potential installation/configuration issues
Coming soon…
• Regular expressions for URL matching rules
• Ability to handle template tracking
• Ability to track login-protected pages
• Export to CSV
• Downloadable Heatmaps
• IP Address blocking (existing 1.0 feature)
• Ability to track custom elements

To brush up on your analytics, pick up a copy of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day