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Friday, April 29, 2011

A great response, and a lesson in social media

Something a bit unusual today. On Monday I wrote 20 reasons you shouldn’t listen to a word I say. Today, I was delighted to receive a 20-item response to my 20 items from Angela Hansen. I liked it so much I asked her for permission to publish it here.

And no, Angela is not giving me a link, or paying me. She didn’t even send me a Kit Kat.

I have started writing at least 100 books. All of them begin with some sort of letter to someone who has irritated the hell out of me. I generally abandon said book after chapter 3 when I've grown up and gotten over it.
Major marketing folks speak out of their a$$es much of the time. I've found that they like to take what they have read from the latest greatest marketing book and spin it to look like their own.
I haven't made $100K. Ok, over the course of my career, yeah. Not ever in one year though.. TAKE THAT!
I waste my time playing Mahjong Trails on Facebook. My main goal is slaughtering my friends high scores. Try that and see how many hours you can lose in 1 day. My high score in hours is 3 hours.
I'm a people person who really doesn't like people. I'm not sure if that is wishy-washy or a disorder of some sort.
I'm a Democrat who feels like most people don't take responsibility for their actions. I believe in social welfare for people who really have fallen on hard times, but our line in the sand is so far out there that it creates sloth (I'll stop right there… no Kevin Spacey, head-in-a box, Pitt/Freeman drama to follow).
My blog earns $0 because I obviously haven't followed the "How to make money with your blog" guidelines.
I have closed 3 of my businesses because I broke even THEN realized I worked far too hard at something that gave me absolutely no sense of fulfillment. "Your skin looks beautiful Mary!" or "data security is more important than you think..." I could go on.
I'm not a l33t hax0r, nor do I know what that means.
I recently went back to "Lead Gen", which is really just a different word for telemarketing. I actually pitch my services as, "Your sales people close better if they practice closing often. If they are out getting kicked in the throat every day, they aren't spending much time closing aren't they? Let me take care of that part for you." It's nauseating. It pays the bills. My throat is really sore.
I generally attract the people at conferences who are looking for the person who sits in the crowd taking notes and making smart assed comments.
I will forgive you for not appreciating good wine. If we're going to rate non-alcoholic beverages, I would highly recommend the Monster Lo-carb FTW!
Charlie Sheen? You're kidding, right? It's a train wreck full of tiger blood. Who can resist tiger blood?!
I once wrote something to Penthouse Forum. That counts right?
Every time I've had a break up, I feel like the people who made P.S. I Love You are geniuses. We can't be right all of the time.
Try hockey.
I aced every single class in college that required a lot of writing. I love writing, but hated every single minute of those classes.
I look nothing like Angelina Jolie. Who cares? Millions of people love Stephen King… have you SEEN that guy?
Three out of five people I work with have their own businesses. I have a sneaking suspicion they only come to work to use the phones and internet for free. Obviously anyone can have a business, but successful… I'm with you on that one.
On this point I can only say, "Bravo!" The fact is, marketing is only the "opening your mouth" stage of building a relationship. If you're not prepared to put your money where your mouth is, you have failed. I spent three years stripping down and building up Microsoft canned marketing campaigns for their partners. In the end it didn't matter how brilliant the verbiage was, how driving the call-to-action was, or how inexpensive the service was… if the partner wasn't ready to go after the business and follow up follow up follow up, it was going to fail.

By the way, if you wanted to see a real-life example of a good social media/guest blogging strategy, this is it. Angela didn’t send me a random, crappy article about a ‘new marketing trend’. Nor did she leave a comment on my post like 'nice job!' She wrote a direct response to something I wrote, and sent it to me. She didn’t ask for it to be published. I didn't get the sense she had an agenda when she sent it, either.

Sometimes, your best social media strategy is to have a little fun.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/qalocTth9zw/a_great_response_and_a_lesson.htm

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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Google Apps Script Tip #1: Finding the last row

I've been building some custom reports for Portent in Google Spreadsheets. They do fun stuff like grab Google Analytics data, insert data from other APIs and such.

One thing that nearly drove me batty, though, was figuring out how to automatically add a new row below the last row with data.

Turns out, Google App Script has it's own nifty command, called getLastRow. Here's how you do it:

function FindRows() { range = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getLastRow(); return range; }

That's it. It'll return the value range. That value is the number of the last row on the sheet that has data. You can then pass that back to other functions to start adding new rows in the right place, delete rows, etc..

If this is all gibberish, fear not. Marketing Ian will be back Monday. Today is Nerd Ian.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/eKiT5t8Ef3o/google-app-script-1.htm

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20 reasons you shouldn't listen to a word I say

I feel strongly about full disclosure. So, here it is—20 reasons I'm full of crap:

I don’t have a best selling book. Nor, at this rate, will I ever.
Major marketing conferences bark with laughter when I submit a speaker’s pitch.
I haven’t made $10 million. I haven’t even made $1 million. I’m just a guy who writes a lot.
I have been known to play Dungeons and Dragons, and we know what those people are like.
I’m a cat person. And a dog person. And a guinea pig person. And an octopus person. I’m wishy-washy.
I’m a Democrat who believes in free enterprise and Atlas Shrugged. Again with the wishy washy.
My blog earns me a whopping $350/month.
I didn’t sell my first company for millions when I was 25.
I’m not a l33t hax0r.
I once worked as a telemarketer. I was really good at it. I quit because it made me nauseous.
I don’t have throngs of people following me around at conferences.
Good wine does nothing for me. Diet Coke FTW.
I don’t get the whole Charlie Sheen thing.
Not one major magazine gives a crap what I have to say.
I think They Might Be Giants are artistic geniuses. There. I said it.
Baseball feels like 30 minutes of action crammed into 5 hours. I’m un-American.
My legal research & writing professor gave me a C-, telling me I had ‘little promise as a writer’. Of course, she didn’t last as long as I did at UCLA Law—I graduated. She quit after 2 semesters.
I look nothing like Don Draper. I look more like a tall, slightly overweight Woody Allen with a gland problem.
I don’t believe that anyone can run a successful business. I actually don’t believe sane people can run a successful business at all.
I promise nothing. There are no guarantees in marketing. It’s total chaos, and you don’t control your own destiny. The best you can do is maximize the chances that something good will happen. Which is what it’s all about.

Other stuff

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/7k8wgv7C26I/20-reasons-listen-say.htm

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The perfect internet marketing dashboard

I want the perfect marketing dashboard.

But I can never seem to find it.

Here's what it needs to look like:

Why is that so hard?

If I'm missing something, let me know.

Other stuff

25 tips for building your own agency

Trash the web sites: What Gawker Media (probably) said

11 signs you're not ready to run your own company

Groupon’s days are numbered

Discounts: The vicodin of internet marketing

Companies need tension: Avoiding the ‘you go’ effect.

My SEO copywriting e-book - $7

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/U-6QI0bfzC8/the_perfect_marketing_dashboar.htm

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Truth or dare? 6 internet marketing trends put to the test

In the last month there's been a lot of hand-wringing about search engines changing their algorithms, social media sites tweaking their privacy settings and other 'game changing' internet marketing kerfuffles.

I picked 6 of the alleged changes that have folks talking, from SEO to social media, and rated each one on my personal truthiness scale:

SEO: Link anchor text matters less

What they said: Having the exact same anchor text in 75% of links pointing at your site used to be a good thing. Now, it can get you dinged for spamming. Or at the very least, it's less effective. Read a great article by SEOWiz for more info. The tinfoil hat crowd takes it a step farther and says that Google has changed their algorithm to zap sites with suspicious link anchor text.

Who said it: Lots of smart people, including SEOWiz, above, and SEOMOZ, and a few others.

Truthiness: Solid. Believe it.

Analysis: Anchor text does matter less. But I highly doubt that Google is penalizing sites for less consistent anchor text. That would make it far too easy to sabotage competitors. I suspect that Google has devalued link text, and has improved their algorithm so that you get less value from consecutive links with the same link text. So it's not a penalty - folks who depended too heavily on anchor text as their primary SEO strength got hammered because their other SEO factors were too weak. Diversity is key, yes, but no one at Google is looking at link profiles and saying "Ah HAH! Busted!". If they were, I wouldn't have to explain to clients why a competitor with 1,000 links from blogs about 'grow hair now' outranks them.

What to do: This is just the first shot in a coming war against link spam. I hope. If you happen to use link buying as a strategy, and most of those links show up in footers, with the same link text, you'd better start diversifying. Otherwise you're toast. I hope.

SEO: Links to the domain matter more

What they said: Total number of links to your web site, regardless of the page to which they point, is what really matters.

Who said it: No one specific, but the Universe is definitely tilting in this direction.

Truthiness: Solid. Believe it.

Analysis: Well, duh! The way authority flows through a web site, links to every page will provide at least a little lift to every other page. Check out my non-mathematical PageRank explanation to see why. OK, I didn't mean 'duh' like 'you idiots' - I meant 'duh' like 'well said, why didn't I think of that'.

Caveat: Search engines still rank pages more than sites. So I'm not sure how far this model really goes. But it makes sense.

What to do: Diversify! Don't force folks to link to your home page all the time. Let 'em link to relevant blog posts, products, etc. and you'll do just fine.

Social and SEO: Twitter, Facebook chatter affect rankings

What they said: Links shared on Facebook and retweeted on Twitter can impact your ranking.

Who said it: Uh, Google and Bing. We should probably listen.

Truthiness: 100%. It's right there in black and white.

Analysis: Not to seem smug, but I'd swear I wrote something about social media and SEO working together way back when. Oh, wait, I am smug.

What to do: Stop saying you're afraid of brand damage on Twitter. Stop letting your legal department or branding team hold your Facebook strategy hostage. Get off your butt and start communicating. Otherwise, your internet marketing strategy is going to be roadkill within a year.

Social media: Facebook's improving privacy

What they said: I'm going to try to type this with a straight face - Facebook says they're improving privacy protections on their site with new settings.

Who said it: Facebook.

Truthiness: Totally false. Your... your PANTS... They're on FIRE!!!!!

Analysis: Seriously? Facebook is dumping user histories to advertisers willy-nilly, and a few extra buttons in my already-incomprehensible privacy settings are supposed to help? Sorry, no.

What to do: Stop using third-party apps and games on Facebook. Especially Farmville, which, if reports are accurate, has become a huge vacuum cleaner, voraciously sucking down your Facebook user history and who-knows-what-else.

SEO: New META tags help with content syndication

What they said: Google has introduced a couple of new meta tags. "syndication-source" lets the originating site tell Google that theirs is the original source of content found on other sites. It also lets the syndicating site tell Google where they got the content. "original-source" lets the syndicator credit the original site(s) for their content.

Who said it: Google

Truthiness: Low. Pants aren't on fire, but they're definitely smoldering.

Analysis: Given how well nofollow and rel=canonical worked out, I'd wait a while (oh, say a couple years) before using these tags. I'm the tinfoil hat dude on this one.

What to do: Any time search engines provide a specific tag or attribute solely to sort out duplicate content or link confusion, run. Any tag that artificially adjusts how search engines perceive your content, even if it's from the search engines themselves, is risky. that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Social media: Twitter's going to fail

What they said: Still fraught with server issues and bleeding active users, Twitter is circling the drain and soon to die.

Who said it: Anyone who wants attention.

Truthiness: Totally false. Pants flash disintegrated.

Analysis: Once you get a few hundred companies using your API, and, oh, a couple of search engines relying on you as a ranking factor, you're pretty safe.

What to do: Ignore the doomsayers.

SEO is dead

I'm not even going to dignify this one with an answer. If you're going to write that SEO is dead, take your pants off first, or you'll be incinerated when they burst into flames because of your filthy, filthy lies.

Recent and related

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/dpPGmG-08U8/6-internet-marketing-trends-tested.htm

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Conversation Marketing: A definition

I've written 2,890 posts on Conversation Marketing now. I just crossed 10,000 (non-spam) comments, too.

But I've never actually provided a definition of Conversation Marketing.

Lots of other people have. Some did OK. Some are just ridiculous. So I figured I'd give it a shot.

I'm not trying to define it in a "this is what it means, so screw the rest of you" way. I just mean, define what I mean when I say the phrase.

So, here goes:

Conversation marketing: Highly iterative, internet-driven marketing where customer needs drive design, content and technology, analysis drives changes, and customers are long-term participants.

I figure I should go into a bit more detail, though. I'm going to do it in reverse:

Customers are long-term participants

I am not going to use the word 'engagement'. When I say 'long-term participants' I mean that:

Companies give customers the option to keep in touch. Think of a Facebook 'like' button, or an e-mail signup form.
The company provides value in exchange: Useful information, free stuff, coupons, or just the intrinsic benefits of 'belonging'.
The company invites participation. The company talks to the customers who opt in. 'Talks to' means 'starts discussions' and 'informs', not just 'rams coupons down their throats'. For example, the company might send out a quick guide for getting the most out of their product.

Analysis drives changes

I'm all for gut instinct when it comes to marketing. But at some point you need to observe and adjust.

This was actually why I started using the phrase 'conversation marketing' in the first place. The internet is the first place, short of an in-person discussion, where you can make a statement, watch how your audience responds, and adjust your next statement accordingly.

With analytics tools, log files, surveys, etc., you can easily use data to tweak and refine your message.

Customer needs drive design, content, technology

This one sounds like corporate marketspeak. Cringe.

But ego-driven marketing still seems to have the edge out there, and I find that infuriating. Just because you, Ms. CEO, think that purple mouse trails are the greatest thing ever, doesn't mean your customers agree.

Let the customers drive what you do. Not your ego.

Highly iterative

Finally, conversation marketing means a lot of iteration. If analysis drives change, and you can constantly observe, then you should constantly adjust, too.

That's the other unique property of internet marketing: You can change content in a heartbeat. If you're not iterating, you're probably wasting a lot of potential.