The Web Has Been Acquihired by AOL

Sam Harrelson on March 10, 2013

Fantastic post:

The World Wide Web is Moving to AOL! – Brian Bailey: “An update from the Founder and CEO of World Wide Web, Inc.

October 1, 1998

I know this blog has been quiet lately. It’s been a crazy few months of meetings and negotiation here at WWW HQ, but we’re finally ready to share our big news: World Wide Web is joining the America Online team next month! We couldn’t be more excited.”

Go read the full post, especially the postscript.

Thankfully, the www was born in 1991 and not 2011.

Handy Google Spreadsheet Keyword Generator

Sam Harrelson on March 9, 2013

I keep track of all our keyword bids, ideas, brainstorms and lists in Google Drive via Spreadsheets.

I had no idea this was possible but will be using the heck out of this feature now…

A Glimpse Into Google’s Brain, Hidden In A Spreadsheet App: “Yesterday TechCrunch reported that if you make a spreadsheet in Google Drive (Google Docs, formerly), enter and highlight the names of two beers, and pull down on the corner of the spreadsheet cell while holding Option or Control, the app will automatically fill the following cells with the names of other beers. The information is pulled, seemingly, from nowhere.”

And a few examples here.

And no, it’s not just for beer. I made a few quick tries with keyword lists for specific specialty clients and was impressed with the nature of the returns.

It’s not a replacement for keyword-specific tools, but a nice way to brainstorm from time to time.

Google Sets have been around for a while and I was always impressed with what was possible (and bewildered they “shut down” the service a few years back). Nice to see Sets having a long life ahead as a part of Google Drive.

What Marketers Should Know About Facebook’s New News Feed

Sam Harrelson on March 7, 2013

Excellent post and resources to ponder if you use Facebook for your performance marketing efforts…

Facebook Update Gives Users More Control Over News Feed: What Marketers Should Know: “Facebook’s design changes make it much easier for Facebook users to tune out content from businesses and brands. Because this is the case, you need to give your fans even more incentive to check out their Following Feed to view your content so they can engage with it via Likes, comments, and shares, enabling you to show up in their friends’ All Friends Feed. This makes it even more critical that you post content that is compelling and sharable.”

via Steve Hall on Twitter

Spreading Too Thin on Social Sites

Sam Harrelson on March 7, 2013

Spreading videos you’ve already made (and the ones you haven’t made yet) to social channels is one of the common sense things that many marketers don’t do well.

On top of that, making sure to do more than just link or embed your videos on sites as if you’re simply broadcasting is something most marketers just simply ignore.

Yes, spread your videos around but don’t just dilute your message online by blasting your posts or videos or podcasts everywhere… just as when you are learning in school, it’s better to go deeper than wider when applying social media strategies. Don’t have time for LinkedIn? Don’t post there. Think Twitter is silly? Don’t tweet. Have no clue why Pinterest is a big deal? Don’t pin.

Find the balance between spreading your content (posts, video, audio, pics etc) but don’t spread yourself too thin on sites that you’re not authentically using and engaging…

Leverage Your Existing Videos on Your Social Media Sites | SoMedia Video Marketing Blog: “LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Google+ are all great places to post your videos—in fact I think LinkedIn and Google+ are going to be big destinations for online business video in the near future—which is the key point here: once you’ve created a video, you need to ensure you leverage it beyond your website. Don’t just hide it on your website, consider all the places where your target audience is online, stake your claim, and post the video there.”

via Tris Hussey on Twitter

SimilarWeb for Helpful Site Stats

Sam Harrelson on March 6, 2013

There are numerous and plentiful stat sites for your own affiliate sites or if you’re interested in seeing where your competitors are gaining or sending traffic.

However, a site we’ve been really enjoying lately called SimilarWeb has been insanely helpful for all things stat-related:

SimilarWeb – About Us: “The source of our data is the accurate collection of clickstream data from internet users all over the world. Unlike some providers who focus on a specific region or user type, our collection is done on a global scale, with a statistically representative cross-section of all types of consumers. This allows us to reach unbiased, all-round understanding of a website’s traffic.”

For instance, here’s ReveNews’ entry on SimilarWeb.

Or here is CouponCabin.

You get the point.

This is fun and very helpful. Go and enjoy this awesome free tool.

Plunk for Mobile Site Testing

Sam Harrelson on March 6, 2013

Plunk is a nifty and easy-to-use utility that allows you to upload a mobile screen image of a site you might be testing or designing, share it with others and get a report 48 hours later of where people touched their screen.

It’s totally for mobile sites and I think it’s an ingenious idea given the analytics you get:

Plunk – An easy way to test clicks on a mobile phone…

“Here are 5 ways Plunk will help:
1. User intuition. See where touch screen testers want to click on your page.
2. Improve functionality. Visually review where users are expecting to find that new button.
3. Retain interaction and engagement. Test where mobile users are getting lost due to either navigation or design and keep their attention locked.
4. Mobile conversion. Feedback for creating a great design will encourage more mobile activity.
5. Bob for those apples. Stuck deciding between new mobile designs? Send them out and dive into your results to find the best one!time and money. Plunk lets you test your mobile users’ clicks to figure out what works and what doesn’t.”

You can share the image to get results to your own social networking followers or to an email beta list etc.

Very cool and handy, especially for performance marketers using mobile (as you should be).

Twitter’s Essential Value to Marketers

Sam Harrelson on March 6, 2013

It’s amazing to me that Twitter has grown from a (perceived) questionable platform of democratized reporting of breakfasts and cat activity around the world to a full blown news stream.

Well, not amazing… we saw it coming and we knew that Twitter or something like it, would eventually fill the place that RSS started carving out in the early 2000’s.

This is pretty solid testimony for what Twitter means to the news business:

How Twitter won the social media battle for journalism | The Wall Blog: “More telling is the comment from Joanna Carr, editor of BBC Radio 4′s news programme ‘PM’, who said she ‘wouldn’t hire anybody who doesn’t know how to use Twitter’.

From that you get all you need to know. Twitter has quickly made itself an essential modern journalism tool for news journalists.”

(Via Matthew Ingram on Twitter)

So what does this mean for marketers?

The same thing Twitter meant for marketers in 2007 when I wrote this on CostPerNews:

It really is amazing to see how these conversations have started to sprout up as more and more people in our sphere get involved with these micro-platforms. I took a great deal of heat for being a Twitter fan boy late last year, but those same people who gave the heat are now (for the most part) realizing the potential that these programs have for their marketing efforts.

After all, marketing is just the spread of information about an idea, service, program, theology, ideology, offer or emotion… what better way to do spread that information in an attention deficit world than through micro-chunks?

I still stand by that.

Just as it is no longer an option or convenience for press professionals to not use Twitter, it is not an option for performance marketers to continue to either ignore or just use Twitter as a broadcasting medium in 2013 (or 2007).

Importance of Marketing Plans

Sam Harrelson on March 5, 2013

Whether you’re doing search marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, social media, PPC or some combination of those it’s always important to at least have a framework plan set out.

Here’s a quick and easy post that helps spur some thoughts about marketing plans and what you could be doing to improve your campaigns…

Writing Marketing Plans – SEO Book: “Writing forces an analytic approach. The act of writing something down often brings about new ideas because it gets us out of the routine of ‘just doing’. Secondly, writing plans helps us write better proposals. A marketing plan is about both an analysis and a form of communication. It’s a means to get across your ideas to clients and other partners and convince them of the merits of what we’re doing.”

Importance of Social Media Curation in Marketing

Sam Harrelson on March 5, 2013

Great questions and answers here:

Social Media Curation Guide | SEOmoz: “Last year on SEOmoz, I published The Content Curation Guide for SEO, which – even though it is still valid – I thought it needed a fresh addition. Not only does this post update some of the information shared, but it also digs deeper into an aspect of content curation that is actually the most used and, possibly, useful to SEOs and Content Marketers who must deal with more duties than just curation: social media curation.”

The web is social in 2013 regardless if you’re participating in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ etc with your affiliate site or branding site or company. Finding the proper balance between your own voice while putting together interesting links for your intended and/or potential audience (or group of customers) is so incredibly important.

If you’re not thinking of social media curation as a part of your performance marketing effort, you’re not thinking of the whole picture.