Tumblr’s Untraditional and Provocative Mobile Advertising Approach

Sam Harrelson on March 5, 2013

It’s interesting to note that Tumblr is taking a different approach to monetizing its rabid and highly-participatory audience… rather than selling IAB-style display ads or keyword based text ads, Tumblr is encouraging brands to put their own content out there as ads and use more organic means such as the built in views or hearts paradigms as measures of engagement.

Tumblr to Introduce Mobile Advertising to Help Achieve Profit – Bloomberg: “Tumblr, a startup founded by Karp, now gets more than 16 billion monthly page views worldwide, according to Quantcast Corp. To reach those eyeballs, companies won’t be able to buy display space or keywords in the ways they are accustomed — Tumblr is ‘not going to get into the regular ad network,’ Gottfrid said.

Instead, they have to pay to get their own Tumblr blogs seen by more people. They can measure impact by how many viewers republished the post on their own blogs or ‘hearted’ it.”

Twitter’s card-based display advertising and promoted tweets platform has been an up-and-down adventure for many advertisers and marketers because Twitter is asking companies to place a style of advertising on top of community that doesn’t operate in such a fashion.

Tumblr’s approach is definitely refreshing in that they are welcoming advertisers and marketers but asking them to not just bring traditional Madison Ave constructs to the service but to actually participate using methods that the users use and are familiar with themselves.

I can’t wait to see how the numbers go for this.

Tara Hunt Explains the Secret to Great Social Content

Sam Harrelson on March 5, 2013

Tara lays it out with a nice analogy and rock solid advice at the end:

The Secret to Great Social Content – Tara Hunt on LinkedIn: “Quite often, people seek out things like formulas and best practices and all sorts of ways to ensure the best outcomes. Books and posts and articles and infographics are gobbled up whole in order to satisfy an eager marketers desire to implement a ‘highly impactful’ content strategy. These types are Hedgehogs. They will see a popular 700×700 inspirational quote being passed around Facebook like wildfire and think, “A-ha! That’s the key! We need to create more square inspirational quotes!'”

Head over and read the post, it’s worth your time to reflect on how you’re making content for social media tied to your marketing campaigns and efforts and how effective you’re really being with your words and images.

Marketing in 2013 requires heart to be successful and marketers all-too-often forget that.

Twitter Killing TweetDeck on Desktop and Mobile

Sam Harrelson on March 4, 2013

I run TweetDeck on my beloved ChromeBook because of the rather impressive Chrome app that Twitter has created for the interface. To be honest, this isn’t really that surprising given that TweetDeck has been moving towards the web and away from its roots in Adobe Air:

An update on TweetDeck – The TweetDeck Blog: “TweetDeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for tracking real-time conversations. Its flexibility and customizable layout let you keep up with what’s happening on Twitter, across multiple topics and accounts, in real time. To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.”

I’m actually excited about this and hope that Twitter continues to put dev resources towards the product that I’ve been using for many many years now as my go-to “Twitter power user” app.

Facebook Responds to Pay-to-Play Allegations

Sam Harrelson on March 4, 2013

Facebook says we’re wrong about its pay-to-play scheme for surfacing content in users’ news feeds:

Fact Check – Facebook Newsroom: “There have been recent claims suggesting that our News Feed algorithm suppresses organic distribution of posts in favor of paid posts in order to increase our revenue. This is not true. We want to clear up any misconceptions by explaining how the News Feed algorithm works.”

It’s interesting to see Facebook take to their blog to defend their algorithms the day after the original post in the NY Times.

Instagram and Affiliate Marketing

Sam Harrelson on March 4, 2013

Instagram continues to be a hotbed of brand engagement with users despite concerns about its new privacy policy and its souring relationship with Twitter:

Despite a Rocky Road, 59% of Top Brands Are Now Active on Instagram [STUDY] – SimplyMeasured: “With 90 million monthly active users, 40 million photos per day, and 8,500 likes per second, Instagram has now managed to attract 59% of the world’s top brands. The past three months have seen a number of new feature and policy changes on the network, creating both incentives for brands to adopt, but also a backlash among users.”

However, how well does Instagram work with performance marketers? Brand marketers seem to be having a field day with the service, but is there any translation to the affiliate or action-oriented segment of marketers?

Aside from approaches that use bots and questionable tactics, it is quite possible to do well with affiliate marketing using Instagram.

For starters, Instagram’s visual nature makes it a no-brainer for connecting with product driven affiliate offers. If you’re marketing something that is service related, show results of your service or how it helps people get something done or done better.

Instagram’s ability to help people make connections by performing as a visual aid is a natural fit for affiliate marketers as well. As with all marketing, you want to “show not just tell” and Instagram is great for showing stories or snippets relevant to your campaign.

Instagram’s connections with Facebook shouldn’t be taken for granted either, since the service can quickly send visual images into the Great Walled Garden.

As with the early days of Twitter and its growth of a community ethos, it’s important to keep in mind that people value the visual function and fun of Instagram but won’t react in a positive way to pure spam. So keep community rules in your mind if you’re going to use Instagram in your affiliate campaign.

Most importantly, use your head and keep your stats.

EMail Marketing and Search Still Important on Social Web

Sam Harrelson on March 4, 2013

Email Users in US

With Mature US Online Population, Small Gains for Email, Search Usage – eMarketer: “Email and search engine usage, two of the most common digital activities, have also reached saturation among internet users. For the vast majority of internet users, email and search are basic functions necessary to efficiently use the web—and navigate daily life—unlike other digital activities such as social networking, video viewing or gaming.”

While the social web is a fascinating and lucrative place to spend time and attention building your affiliate site traffic or online business customer base, there’s still a great deal to be said about effective email marketing and search campaigns.

One of the best ways to see early growth on a new campaign or site is to put together a coherent and well-thought-out marketing effort involving good content, personable social media presence and coordinated email newsletters with good organic (and perhaps paid) search listings. Putting in a little time at the beginning will save you much more time and money later and prevent you from spending extra resources playing catch-up.

iWatch Doubts

Sam Harrelson on March 4, 2013

I’m still not sold on the concept of a “smartwatch” that replicates some of the functions of a mobile device such as the iPhone. Granted, I haven’t worn a watch in a decade but I do carry a mobile phone with me most anywhere.

Apple’s watch will run iOS and arrive later this year, say sources – The Verge: “That’s perfectly in line with what we’ve heard about the watch project, which we’re told is being led by Ive himself with some 100 engineers under him. Interestingly, we’re also told that Apple’s chosen to rework the full iOS to run on the watch instead of building up the iPod nano’s proprietary touch operating system — although the previous nano was already watch-sized and seemed like a great starting point for a wrist-sized device, Apple’s betting on iOS across product lines.”

Whatever the final form and function of the mythical iWatch might be, I’m still betting heavily on Google’s wearable platform called Glass. To me, the ability to get a heads up display of relevant contextual information as well as quickly capture images or video from your point of view with a simple voice command points to a bright future for Glass.

CostPerNews 2.0

Sam Harrelson on March 3, 2013

I wrote this on CostPerNews almost five years ago back in June 2008:

CPN went live on Nov 1, 2006 and I had no idea where it was going (and still don’t). 19 months later (at an average of 52 posts a month), we’ve hit the magic 1k mark.

I knew in October of ’06 that I wanted to have a place where I could write as frequently or infrequently as I wanted and cover the emerging web2.0 space and the connections I was (and still am) seeing with traditional affiliate marketing. I came up with the name while mowing the lawn that Fall and ran inside to register the domain before I forgot. Luckily, I didn’t forget.

I can honestly say that this little blog has been the most important vehicle for my own personal brand and business, helping me to get into doors that wouldn’t have been opened otherwise and helping me to get to know some pretty incredible people along the way. If you’re wondering if you should start a blog, take it from me… yes.

So, thank you for being there and listening to my crazy ramblings about Twitter and Tumblr and RSS and open source over the past couple of years. I’ve sold this blog, quit this blog (twice), re-acquired this blog and redesigned it (at least 10 times). And here we are again.

CostPerNews was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach an audience that I really did appreciate and enjoy interacting with on an almost daily basis. Few days went by from late 2006 until 2010 that I didn’t blog 4, 5 or 6 times on CPN.

Posts had high engagement with comments and emails. Often times, comment threads got heated as we fought to carve out the brave new social web while preserving a corner niche for affiliate marketing.

Eventually, CostPerNews was brought into an awesome partnership with ReveNews (now a part of the Affiliate Summit family).

I enjoyed my time as Publisher of ReveNews, but soon missed the community and quirky nature of web2.0-meets-affiliate marketing at CostPerNews, so I bought it back and resumed blogging there.

I’d sell the site for a second and final time as my family grew and I felt as if I’d run out of time for blogging and the commitment that CPN took to be successful.

Needless to say, I miss writing about the intersection of web tech and marketing. I miss the passionate community of CPN. I most especially miss the daily (almost monastic) practice of writing and writing and writing some more.

I miss the notion of shoshin, or “beginner’s mind” and the joy I had blogging on CPN in 2006 and 2007 when I had no idea what I was talking about but all the passion in the world for how Twitter and Tumblr and blogging were going to change affiliate marketing forever.

I want to get back to that. There are so many exciting developments in the intersection of web tech and marketing. So many of these intersections are products and fruit of what we were hammering out in 2006.

Now that Shawn and Missy have acquired ReveNews, we need more performance marketing blogs anyway 🙂

It’s time to reboot CPN.

MarketingTrends.co is my attempt to find that voice and that writing and that community that I once got to have. You can’t go back home again, but you can create something pretty amazing more than once.

That’s my plan here. I hope you’ll follow along and enjoy.

On Facebook, It’s Pay to Play if You Want to Be Seen

Sam Harrelson on March 3, 2013

This comes as no real surprise for marketers who use Facebook to promote products, offers or brands, but if you’re not willing to pay up you’re probably not going to show up with as many likes or engagement as you had hoped for:

On Facebook, Sharing Can Come at a Cost – NYTimes.com: “To my surprise, I saw a 1,000 percent increase in the interaction on a link I posted, which had 130 likes and 30 reshares in just a few hours. It seems as if Facebook is not only promoting my links on news feeds when I pay for them, but also possibly suppressing the ones I do not pay for.”

Hunter Walk also has a few good theories as to why engagement stats on Facebook seem to be dipping including better spam fighting, effects of ad models and the impact of mobile UX.

Having been on the organic and paid side of Facebook marketing, I’ll stick with the pay-to-play theory for now.

Free Icon Font Sets For Affiliate Sites

Sam Harrelson on March 3, 2013

10 free icon font sets that are highly customizable and scalable. I used Sosa on an affiliate site redesign over the weekend and the results were fantastic, so wanted to share here as well…

10 Super Useful Free Icon Font Sets | Freebies: “Icon fonts are great because, as you may have guessed, they are delivered as a font. This gives them a number of advantages over traditional image icons. For instance, if you want to change the color, it can easily be done with CSS. Whereas with an image, you would need to have a separate version of the icon. Scaling and adding effects, such as shadows, is just as simple.”