index

What happened to Evite?

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:54:43 +0100

Evite is great. Its great if you want a standalone invite system for your party that doesn't integrate with where everyone else is on the internet. Why haven't they built a Facebook app or integration? What is wrong with them. Facebook is the ultimate fit for someone like Evite. As my friend over at andrewmachado.com said in his post about how terrible the Facebook event app is, why haven't they built an integration or app on Facebook. Evite does things that Facebook Events doesn't do well. This post is more about an observation than any suggestions but come on get your act together Evite and innovate like the rest of the internet.

SES San Jose Day 2

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:18:37 +0100

Day two of SES San Jose was a significant improvement over day one. The session I attended with Tim Ash, the leader in landing page optimization, was facinating. I loved his thoughts on ways to approach this amazingly important aspect of SEM. I could really see how powerful of a subject this was as the room was completely full with many people standing just to see him speak.

After his session, and the extremely lacking lunch, the keynote session began. This came with high hopes as the speaker was a Director of the AdWords department at Google. However, his presentation was lacking and he essentially read it off his papers. Nothing major or groundbreaking came from this. He just offered up what his thoughts were on the industry and how Google is looking to improve.

SES San Jose Day 1

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:27:38 +0100

If I had to explain SES San Jose's first day I would definitely describe it as underwhelming. Of the sessions that I attended there was very little actionable discussion going on. Much of what I heard was very high level explanation of what things are. There wasn't a whole lot of new best practices. I was hoping that maybe i just missed the good sessions but after speaking with a few colleagues here I learned that I wasn't alone. This can be expected however at such a large conference such as SES San Jose because there is such a wide breadth of visitor.

On the Expo floor front I was surprised to see a fairly strong lack of agencies peddling their business. There is no shortage of great tools and other ad network offerings with very interesting and stylish booths. This, however, was dissapointing for me as one of my main tasks while here was to gather information on possible SEO vendors for my company to partner with. From what I have seen while wandering the rather expansive expo floor is that there are only 3-4 real SEO "agencies" to meet with. This is disappointing for me as a company, but great for those who are trying to grow their business.

God We're Fat!

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:15:49 +0100

There is no getting around it, America is fat, not just fat, morbidly obese. It's disgusting, and I feel like I can say that without prejudice because i was one of those useless fatties. A short 7 months ago I was tipping the scale at 310 and doing nothing about it except eating and drinking more. I finally have gotten my act together and am down 75 lbs to a more healthy manageable weight (thanks to Jumpstart Medicine). As an avid food lover I am constantly watching the Food Network learning new techniques and recipies. However, while watching it, it is amazingly evident that America doesn't care what they eat, even if they openly publicize that it will kill you (Heartattack Grill). Now I have tried hard not to be that guy that just bitches at people for eating unhealthy food now that "I've found the light". But man its hard. Whatever, I digress from the seed that spawned this rant in the first place. Ladies and gentleman I bring you the Fattest drink in America: Cold Stone Creamery Gotta Have It PB&C Shake. This is just purely the most assinine thing I've ever seen. Now I'm not one for big government and all, but this is outrageous and should be handled. I am one of the first people that will preach personal responsibility as the best form of regulation but this is just bad. There is no reason for a 2,010 calories, 131 g fat (68 g saturated), 153 g sugars drink. Especially one that kids will definitely buy before they plop their expanding asses on the couch. There is zero benefit to this beverage other than it tastes good. There can't be any nutritional value or reason for drinking it.

This is a losing battle that I'm fighting here but whatever it's still fun to spout off about the increasing uselessness of American society. Don't even get me started on people who are Rascal Fat. Now go out and exercise dammit. Or at least drink light beer. That is all.

Last.fm is King of Internet Radio

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:06:51 +0100

When it comes to listening to music that I don't actually own in my library nothing beats podcasts in my eyes. However, those will often get old or sometimes I just want some variety. When this happens, and it happens often, I turn to Last.fm. I of course have tried Pandora, like so many others, but the features and breadth of library in Last.fm just make for a much more enjoyable experience. First, I feel their recommendation engine is much better, more often giving me songs that relate to the original seed. Second, the downloadable, lightweight, player is a fantastic addition. Too many times I have accidentally closed the browser or tab causing me to lose my session. Not only will this player allow you to play the last.fm library outside your browser with all the features of the in browser experience, but it has "scrobbling". This great piece of technology will "listen" to what you are playing at any time, in almost any media player and log it into your recently played songs in your Last.fm library. By doing this your recommendation engine is always being powered, even when you aren't listening on Last. Lastly but certainly not least, THERE IS NO TIME LIMIT. Unlike Pandora there is no limit to the amount of streaming you get, which is always a good thing.

Cat + Mitten + Slippery Table = Hilarious

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:13:30 +0100

This is a little bit of a non sequitur for me, but I love things that are generally hilarious and this is it to the fullest extent. As I was calmly hanging out on my couch last night watching "Rescue Me" when I happened to catch a glimpse of what I thought was a cat falling off a table. Now being that I am a DVR aficionado I was fast forwarding. I immediately hit rewind to confirm my earlier suspicion. Sure enough it was correct. It was a commercial for the cult hit "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". I must have watched this thing 4 or 5 times laughing hysterically out loud by myself every time.

Plus I thought it was a fun topic to play with one of my favorite new tools "Apture".

Bing seeks first loser position

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:42:15 +0100

It is an exciting day for us Search Marketers. Bing officially announced that they will be powering Yahoo paid ads. This is great news for me as a PPC advertiser because now I no longer have to worry about two minor players fighting against Google, but only one that looks to be on the serious rise. The social community is tweeting in full force about this and seems to be the topic of the day. I can't wait to find out more information about what this means to me as a day to day advertiser in terms of account management and the like. Here goes nothing, Google better look out someone just might pose a solid second best contender here.

Extend your Reach with Conduit

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:46:55 +0100

One of the many challenges that companies face is staying engaged with their customers on the vast nebula that is the Internet. With the rapid development of new browsers, plug-ins and toolbars were able to be created to help users as they browse. Even for someone like myself who is on the 'net all day long, I always thought building one of these would be impossible. That is until I found out about Conduit today.

Conduit has taken all the difficulty out of building a customized toolbar that you can distribute to all of your users and customers. By putting gadgets and content from your site on the toolbar, you're able to customize what you offer them. With simple editing, and analytics features Conduit makes it quick and easy to get the most out of your toolbar. And in this age of "I need it now" mentality, Conduit has done a great job building up their Twitter account, offering quick support. It really looks like they are on to something here, and am excited to try out my own.

Social Network Desktop Apps

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:18:28 +0100

Today I saw the release of a new social network feed desktop app, Skimmer. This got me thinking that I should offer my thoughts on the multitude of apps. I am a big fan of the recent influx of desktop apps trying to capitalize on the multitude of social networks that slowly taking over our lives. These apps work by accessing the API's of the networks and bringing you the feed to a desktop client. I have been using Twhirl to manage my twitter account for months now, and couldn't be happier. It is a great piece of software that allows you to almost 100% manage your Twitter activity from a window not much larger than an IM client I'm sure you already have. Through the use of Adobe AIR, Twhirl offers not only a great looking, but great functioning product. I use it everyday to keep track of what everyone is doing, as well as update my own feed.

This new product, Skimmer, is yet another player in this rapidly growing field. When I first opened the program I was very impressed. It looks great and had a very easy sign-up/log-in interface. However, that is where my love fest started dwindling. While the feed is great looking and set up very well, you can't update your information across the different networks. This was dissapointing to me because unlike Twhirl, with Skimmer you can log into your Facebook profile. I thought this was going to be my one stop app. However once I realized that I couldn't, or at least could figure out how to, update either my Facebook status or my Twitter status. With this said this program is essentially a pretty looking Friendfeed but extremely limited in what it can do. I know it is young and as it grows I'm sure there will be more features added but until then it will not be used by me.

There are many more programs that can be used but for me there is no reason to review them because I am so enthralled with the ease of Twhirl that things like TweetDeck shouldn't be included in the same post. I hope you find this useful and will take the time out to find the tool that works well for you.

Biggest Barriers to Corporate Social Media

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:43:43 +0100

As I work feverishly to develop and launch my company's brand into the social media space I have encountered light, but constant push-back. Luckily for me we recently hired a new VP of Marketing that believes in social media and the power that it holds for our marketing efforts. When I started on the journey of trying to introduce a social plan for our marketing department I was met with resistance from the middle management. Due to my place in the company I don't have a direct line to the VP. This means that I must wade through sr. managers and directors. Due to this light resistance I was able to really grow my knowledge and skills at creating proposals and really evangelizing what I felt was a key initiative. I am so grateful that the people I needed to convince did not just accept what I was saying as truth but rather made me convince many of them of the plan. I am happy to announce now that we have recently received approval to create a branded presence on Twitter with Facebook soon to follow.

The main reason for this post is not to revel in my own success and narcissism but rather discuss the barriers that exist with creating a radically different approach to marketing. In most corporate settings the management is well schooled in traditional methods and procedures for growing your business. The traditional forms of marketing are always needed and social media is just an addition to the overall marketing mix. Because the management is so rooted and schooled in the traditional it takes lots of effort to convince some that social media will help.

The first barrier that is most often hit is that they just simply don't understand. To many Facebook is just a place where college students post their pictures and share crazy stories. People in the social media space really understand that this is not even close to the facts anymore. Yes, that is how Facebook grew its 175 million user base but in the last year or so it has really transformed into a place where businesses can interact with their customers. This is a key idea that needs to be expressed before your management will understand. Use examples of how other companies are using Facebook and social media to create and maintain the conversation with customers and prospects.

Second, proving that social media is a measurable effort. There are a variety of traditional marketing strategies that are simply not measureable and used every day. There really is no way, for example, to measure the true ROI of a radio or TV advertising campaign. Yes, you can use traffic analytics to see if you are receiving more traffic to your store or site but how do you know exactly why the people are coming from. On the other end of the spectrum is my baby, Search Engine Marketing. I specialize in PPC marketing and let me tell you; even in this down economy my team continues to get budget increases because we can provide reports to management that shows exactly where every penny they spend goes and how successful we are. I believe social media falls in the middle of this spectrum. While not as directly measurable as PPC SEM, it is far more measureable than traditional advertising. This is because of the simple fact it is online and as most of us know, everything online is tractable. Use your web analytic tools and tracking systems to easily log what your campaigns are doing.

Thirdly, overcoming the infamous "this is not what our brand is" argument. I work at a company with very strict brand requirements and a military-esque control of the style guide. You must meet and discuss with the people who are in charge of the brand to find out what it is that you can and can't do. Sorry, there is no way around arguing with brand people over what they think. You must obey. This doesn't mean that you can't enter the social media world it just means that you have to work hard to help change the guidelines. Work with the brand police not against. If they are good at their job they will come to a compromise that will allow you to reduce the rigid corporate feel to your brand if that is how it is managed. This barrier is overcome with dialogue and politics. You will not win if you resist everything. After countless discussions with the brand manager I was able to come to a less corporate feel to our Twitter page and relaxed feel on our planned Facebook page.

Hopefully this post will help you understand what it takes to take your company into the social media space. The most important advice I can offer based on my experiences is talking and dialogue is unbelievable important. You must be flexible and work with the powers to be. Evangelism of your cause is also important. Start small and build a following that will work for you. Don't go right to the top because it will be difficult to get them to understand without people on your side.