Month: August 2013

Users Outraged Over Proposed New Facebook Data Guidelines

In case you’ve ever wondered how Facebook might use your data in ads, a court settlement recently shed some light on proposed changes of those policies and procedures:

Facebook clarifies how ads are using your data | Digital Trends: “Instead of giving users the opportunity to use their privacy settings to control how their name and profile picture is used to advertise a brand they Liked on Facebook, the social network is now proposing that by using the site, users automatically give the company permission to use any personal information associated to their profiles for advertising purposes. This means that if you happen to like Downy’s Facebook page on the site, Downy can pay Facebook to use your profile details as an ad on the site without having to pay you.”

While there’s always been a lack of transparency regarding Facebook’s use of our “stuff,” this goes to a whole new level for many people. From a marketer’s perspective, this is a great opportunity. The ability to tie stories which originated from a user’s own circles to a brand would likely create a new level/sense of trust amongst many users (if your friend likes it and posts about it, it’s probably good).

However, I’m not sure this change is one that Facebook will ultimately be able to implement since there are big privacy implications and issues at hand. Reading through some of the comments on the original announcement shows that users don’t approve and are more than willing to move off of Facebook if this change goes through. If Facebook doesn’t listen to its users and embraces a dictatorship as opposed to a democratized services where users still have a voice, it will lose traction and eventually see its demise (which I think is inevitable anyway).

Always important to remember that nothing is free and in turn, there’s a cost associated with everything.

 

5 Tips and 3 Tools to Get You Engaged On Multiple Social Networks

One of the most frequent questions I get during talks on social media marketing have to do with the never ending (and seemingly always expanding) situation of having to post your content to the variety of social networks that currently exist and continue to pop into existence like mini galaxies.

My normal stream of advice goes something like this…

1) Don’t post your content to every social network.

2) Pick the social networks where you want to focus and do your homework. This requires time. However, much like my 7th grade science teacher always said, “proper preparation prevents poor production.” Figure out your intended audience within that network, what your goals are and develop a timeline so that you don’t suffer “two week fatigue” when you don’t see the results you think you should be having.

3) Engage and don’t just post links. There’s an old social media guideline that goes something like 70-75% of your content should be comments, plus 1’s, retweets, replies or likes. Only 20-25% of your actual business social networking should be you broadcasting and posting (and even that is sliding further down towards the 15% range in 2013-2014).

4) Be entertaining. Social media is not TV or radio or a PDF brochure. Social media is for personalities. Even if you’re selling paper products for Dunder Mifflin, there’s space for a company personality. Be quirky and let the kimono open up a little.

5) Try not to automate your posts. There are many good reasons for this but the best is that in a time of a national or international event and/or crisis when everyone turns to Twitter or Facebook, NO ONE wants to see your latest coupon offer. Plus, real-time marketing is red hot. Oreo got it right at last year’s Superbowl.

I always recommend three tools if you do want to participate in multiple social networks with yoru business or marketing campaign… IFTTT, Buffer, and ShareThis.

Briefly, IFTTT is a fascinating tool for moving your content from one place to another on the social web. While not every “recipe” (their nomenclature for instructions on how to move data from one place to another) might be applicable to you or your business, there are some really valuable and time-saving recipes available. Even Twitter has come back to IFTTT. Here are a few of the recipes I use personally and professionally (there are others, but you can choose what to make public and private).

Second, Buffer is a more traditional broadcasting tool that includes nifty features including apps and connections to multiple Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. There are analytics included but for a quick and easy way to get your word out on multiple networks in a free (or cheap with their paid plans) way. There are more heavy duty social media dashboard services or WordPress plugins that do all of this, but in my experienced opinion, Buffer does it much nicer and without the overhead that plagues many of its competitors.

When you’re ready to do real analytics and measuring of your social media engagements, look at ShareThis and their SQI tool. ShareThis makes it incredibly simple to include sharing links on your site (whatever platform you’re using from WordPress to Drupal to Joomla to Tumblr etc). That allows for more organic sharing and ties directly into your efforts. However, once you are sharing and engaging via organic networking, IFTTT and Buffer, a tool like ShareThis is indispensable and you shouldn’t discount its powerful analytics-of-the-share potential.

So, follow those five points then get rolling with IFTTT and Buffer and top it all off with ShareThis. You’ll be happy you did as the social web continues to drive not just traffic but qualified leads to your site.

Tim Storm on Building a Team

Good read from industry legend Tim Storm on the ShareASale blog…

FatWallet started when there were already a number of coupon sites to be found on the internet (and hundreds more yet to be started).  One of the great differentiators early on was that I hired employees to help build and operate the site, where many of my competitors clung fiercely to going it alone.

via #Lessons Learned: A Guest Post from Legend Award Winner Tim Storm | ShareASale Blog.

Tim is one of those people that I’ve always looked up to. Reading his thoughts about building a great team and finding the right people is so important for the affiliate industry. Let’s face it, we’re a group of hard-nosed folks who do like to go it alone. That works sometimes, but often you need a team around you to challenge and compliment your talents.

Twitter’s New Conversations Spark Internet Outrage

Today, Twitter rolled out an updated interface for iOS, Android and the Twitter.com website that makes a major change to how tweeted conversations are viewed:

Today we’re updating our iPhone and Android apps, as well as Twitter.com, to make it easier to discover and follow conversations in your home timeline. From buzz about the VMAs to debates around upcoming football games, people come to Twitter to take part in these real-time, global, public conversations.

via Keep up with conversations on Twitter | Twitter Blogs.

And the internet is not happy:

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However, we’re all missing the point with the twitter-rage (click to go read the search query).

Will Oremus writing on Slate nails the point of this (and why I think it’s a good move for the platform of Twitter):

For all its virtues as an RSS reader, real-time news board, and virtual water cooler, Twitter has never excelled as a platform for connecting with family and friends. The new emphasis on conversations could help to change that. If nothing else, it will privilege tweets that spark discussion over those that don’t.

Twitter, in its ongoing mission to boldly explore the zeitgeist and find a way to make that attractive to marketers, wants to be the center of conversations about twerking at the VMA’s, the next huge 3rd down conversion or that hideously ugly dress at the Emmy’s. It knows that its place is a protocol of conversation that allows for not only operability but also discovery.

Good move, Twitter.

Yoast SEO Plugin and Modified Headers

 

I’ve used Yoast’s SEO WordPress plugin a great deal in the past when I needed a “set it and tinker when necessary” on a client site or affiliate site we’ve developed. I decided to give it a go with the fresh WordPress install we’re using for CostPerNews and discovered something that I’ve heard others complain about in the past… dual sitename titles both in the browser and in the meta.

So, a little googling turned this up:

I have taken a liking lately to Yoast’s SEO plugin.  So far, it just plain works.  Now I am not the type of guy to worry too much about this stuff.  I apply little tweaks here and there and maybe it helps.  But the plugin offers a lot of things I like, like bread crumbs, and easy access to my .htaccess file, and robots.txt.  Only a few things have to change to enjoy this plugin.  Let’s dig in to this.

via Modify Header.php to Get the Most Out of Yoast’s SEO Plugin in a TwentyTen Child Theme – VoodooPress

Basically, clean up your site’s title tags and you’re good to go.

Again, Yoast isn’t for everyone (interesting discussion in the comments if you’re into this type of thing). However, it’s free and is a nice helper when you’re looking for an optimization plugin for your affiliate site that is quick, generates clean sitemaps (necessary for hooking your site up to Google Webmaster Tools, which you should do regardless) or even optimizing your breadcrumbs (always good for SEO!) and cleaning up rel=author issues.

Google Hall of Famer Wayne Porter

CostPerNews owes a great deal to one of its original backers Wayne Porter, even though he is evidently a spook…

Keeping Internet users safe is more than just making sure Google’s products are secure. Google engineers also contribute to improving the security of non-Google software that our products and users rely on.

Provided below is a list of software vulnerabilities discovered or fixed by Googlers, along with presentations we’ve given at industry security conferences. You can also find publications about security, cryptography, and privacy work in Google’s main research portal.

via Vulnerabilities – Application Security – Google.

Thanks for all you did  and do, Wayne 🙂

Google’s Nexus 4 Sale; Nexus 5 Coming Soon?

If you’ve been wanting to switch over to Android but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, Google dropped the prices on their (fantastic) Nexus 4 phones (off-contract/unlocked) today:

Nexus 4 price drops by $100 on Google Play to $199 or $249 [updated] | Android Central: “The official Google Play Twitter account has just confirmed the ‘25% off or more’ sale for the Nexus 4 is active in Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Korea, US and UK.”

Nexus 5 coming soon then? I think so…

Google Keyword Tool Replacements

Google has removed access for its Keyword Tool that was a part of its AdWords platform. So now what do you do?

With Keyword Planner, we’ve combined the functionality of Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to make it easier to plan search campaigns. That’s why Keyword Tool is no longer available. You can use Keyword Planner to find new keyword and ad group ideas, get performance estimates for them to find the bid and budget that are right for you, and then add them to your campaigns. We’ve also added several new features with Keyword Planner.

If you’ve done anything with keyword research for search campaigns, you are probably well aware that this isn’t too much of a bad thing (a la Google killing Reader) as Google is replacing Keyword Tool with Keyword Planner. The trick is that you have to sign in to your AdWords account to have access to the Keyword Planner. Again, that’s not a big hassle for anyone who has already done even the beginnings of a search campaign.

However, the removal of Keyword Tool has sparked a couple of interesting conversations on Twitter and in email today for me. Mostly, industry friends are using this as a chance to trade notes on their favorite keyword research tools beyond Google’s offerings.

I have my own personal favorites but let’s look at a few other suggestions.

For example, Bill Hartzer points to Bing Ads Intelligence, SEMrush and the veritable Keyword Discovery tool. All three are good tools but in my opinion SEMrush stands out here. Bing Ads Intelligence is definitely a nifty tool. However, it’s an .exe download that isn’t compatible with Mac OSX (yet). As a recently re-converted Windows user I do use Excel for keyword research, so BAI works well for me. However, I find that I do so much of my research and work in the browser that it’s one of those tools I just don’t use that often. Keyword Discovery is good at what it does, but I haven’t spent enough time there lately to have much of an opinion. In its heyday it did provide good insight. There are certainly lots of other great tools out there, so feel free to add your suggestions in the comments if you have any favorites.

For me the linchpin of keyword research at the moment is a blend of Google’s own Keyword Planner and SEMrush (in conjunction with WordTracker). From there, I use Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool (subscription req’d but there’s a free trial). Then I top all of that off with a version of Seer’s Keyword Research Tool (a handy Google template they’ve created) that I’ve forked and made very custom for my own needs. I add in some extra variables like my own keyword difficulty ranking formula and that’s my finished product (usually in a set of Excel sheets).

It’s a convoluted system in an age when something like keyword research can (and maybe) should be drop dead easy to perform. Many of the agencies who I work with that focus on just social media like to poke fun at my setup and brag about how easy it is to do similar keyword or demographic buying on Facebook or Twitter. Nevertheless, I enjoy getting my hands dirty and having to do keyword research much like an archaeologist might work in a complicated Tell going cm by cm through the dirt. It’s slower than Indiana Jones style archaeology, but the results are usually better.

Welcome Back to CostPerNews

After a long day of yard work, I rushed into my office and registered the domain “CostPerNews.com.” For some reason, mowing the lawn and trimming hedges always causes me to brainstorm about online marketing. I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the site but only had a vague sense that it would be read by anyone. Initially, I saw CostPerNews as a bridge between the advancements that were happening in the online marketing world (primarily CPA networks, search and email) and the leaps that were being made by new companies such as Twitter and the soon-to-release Tumblr. It was an exciting time to be in tech.

Looking back on those first few months of posting in October, November and December of 2006 and January of 2007, I was averaging about 100 posts a month. That was while having a full time agency and also teaching as an adjunct professor. I was on fire and I remember those passionate days of micro-chunking, widgets and RSS delivery fondly.

Life happened and I eventually joined Wayne and Vinny in a group called incuBeta that rolled ReveNews and CPN into one entity. We had a great time and I came back to CPN full time after a while. Life continued to happen, CostPerNews grew and I decided it was time to go back to the classroom as a teacher. So in 2009 I left CostPerNews in the good hands of Evan Weber.

Seven years after this whole thing started, we’ve decided to reboot the site into something that both Evan and I really believe in… passionate and hard-hitting analysis combined with the ability for companies and affiliates to discover each other. We’re both excited and this is going to be a great step for the site.

So here’s the gameplan:

– CostPerNews will be both a blog (with the same type of content we were lovingly producing in the “good old days”) as well as a directory for networks and offers. You’ll be able to add your CPA, email, or coreg offer in the directory and have access to our still loyal and soon-t0-be growing readership. More on that later this week.

– My former marketing blog, MarketingTrends.co (and its predecessor PayPerTrends) is now folded back into CostPerNews. So in a way, it’s oddly satisfying for me that the content I’ve been making and the comments you’ve been writing are finally back under one umbrella.

– Evan will be heading up the directory side of things and I’ll be focusing more on content. That will overlap some, of course, but we’re excited about the partnership and the possibilities that exist between those two parts.

I can’t tell you how happy we are to be back on the “front page” and front lines of performance marketing both in terms of blogging and what we’re doing with the directory.

Here’s to the next seven(teen) years-

Sam

 

Finally Got My SC Driver’s License (Again)

I got my driving permit the day I turned 14 and my full driver’s license the day I turned 15 in Marion County, South Carolina. I’ve never looked back and love driving.

When I moved to Connecticut for graduate school in 2000, I kept my SC residency. Eventually I had to give that up when I moved to North Carolina in 2006. I thought it would be a simple 20 minute stop to get a new drivers license for SC now that I’ve moved back to Columbia.

Wow was I wrong.

After four visits (during the workday while I’m trying to grow a business) to the Shop Road DMV and many hours of scrounging around for my passport, social security card, pay stubs, birth certificates etc later… I finally can prove that I’m not an illegal alien here to try to take advantage of SC’s bountiful resources and I have my driver’s license for the Palmetto State again.

Seriously, isn’t it illegal to require a social security card for identity verification?

Giving your Social Security number is voluntary, even when you are asked for the number directly. If requested, you should ask why your Social Security number is needed, how your number will be used, what law requires you to give your number and what the consequences are if you refuse. The answers to these questions can help you decide if you want to give your Social Security number. The decision is yours.

Yeah… tried that and was given the “well you cannot get a SC driver’s license” response.

Why I Hate Twitter Six Years Later @jangro

My how time flies…

To my friends: The next time youre about to submit a message to twitter, please think to yourself. “Is this something that all 73 of my friends need to see?” And does what youre writing actually answer the question, “what are you doing?”

via Why I Hate Twitter.

Ran across this tonight while cleaning up the blog. Fun memories.

Dear Facebook, So Long and Thanks For All The Fish

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The sad truth is that the overwhelming majority of people, including highly technical capable people, don’t want peer-to-peer protocols. They don’t want to own their own data. They just want ease. Convenience. Someone else to take over and take care of their data problems. They want the Stacks.

via The Internet: We’re Doing It Wrong | TechCrunch.

I killed my Facebook page once upon a time in 2010 after some (now seemingly innocuous) privacy change I can’t remember.

That killing didn’t last long and I resurrected my page soon after and brought my Facebook existence back to life. However, I’m done. Facebook is over for me and I’m not looking back.

If you want to catch up with me, I’ll be here from now on. Please visit often.

I have a blog. It’s my main point of online existence. I love my blog. It’s fantastic (I think). It is paid for by me, controlled by me and points to things like my Twitter stream (I still love Twitter), my pictures, music I’m listenting to and thoughts I consider worthwhile to publish. If people want to hear those thoughts, they can visit my blog or subscribe to my blog via RSS.

I rarely check into Facebook. I do so about once a day. I flip through a dozen or so posts then move on. I understand that Facebook is the lifeblood of “the internet” for many people. However, I hope those “many” people realize the power of a web that isn’t controlled by one hub or one destination.

I’d much rather engage with people who take the time to set up and curate their own blogs, their own spaces on the web. Whether they pay for that or use a free blogging service, those are quality decisions that push the world to better.

Quite simply, I don’t want to encourage a web that relies on the spine of Facebook while my daughters are young. I want them to have a federated and distributed web like I did as a kid. That might not mean much to you, but consider what that means in the post-PRISM world and think about the ramifications.

What if we all started posting pictures and thoughts and ideas on our own blogs or name spaces instead of Facebook? What if the web didn’t have a walled garden as the social hub but instead relied on people actively subscribing to each other?

That is beautiful. That is where I want to belong.

As a marketing professional, I understand (trust me) the need to be on Facebook, but the need to be on Facebook is outweighed by the benefits of being elsewhere. Particularly on your own blog and in your own social spaces that you’ve created.

So, I’m killing my Facebook account. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us…” and the world will be federated as one.

Go start your own blog and send me a link and I’ll subscribe in my RSS reader. We deserve better.

Let’s do this.

Press, Fever, and Freedom

I’m so excited that my RSS reader of choice on Android (for my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7) has rolled out support for Fever…

What’s New

1.4

– Fever support

via Press – Google Play.

Fever is a fantastic piece of software that does all the duties of something like Feedly or Google Reader (RIP) or FeedWrangler, but on your server.

That does demand that you have some familiarity with what having a server means and how to install PHP programs. It’s not complicated but it is a hurdle that 99% of the “market” isn’t willing to jump.

However, to have an RSS reader that streams me the news on my own terms whether I’m in a browser or on my mobiles gives me satisfaction.

If only more people decided that freedom on the web trumps four minutes of convenience…

What Does Google’s New Personalized Search Mean for Marketers?

When working with our clients on search campaigns, one of the most common conversations I have is about the nature of Google searches and how, if you’re signed in to your Google account, things aren’t universal (despite the “universal search” term).

To drive this home more, Google is now blending its (awesome) Google Now type features with the search engine:

Google today announced a number of search features that make it easier for you to find your own personal information through Google Search. The search engine can now find information about your upcoming flights “Is my flight on time?”, hotel or OpenTable reservations, package delivery information “When will my package arrive?”, your purchases and what’s on your calendar. Just like on Google+, you can also now use the regular Google search to find your own photos through queries like “Show me my photos of beaches.”

via Google Search Gets More Personal, Now Lets You Find Your Flight Info, Reservations, Photos And More | TechCrunch.

Google is quickly living up to its promise to index all of the world’s info (or at least yours). Translating and understanding what that means for SEO and paid search is becoming increasingly more detailed.

However, advertising and marketing always improve as the variable of relativity is increased. While the Panda and Penguin updates Google brought to its search algorithms over the past year have made it seemingly more difficult for some marketers to keep their search traffic flowing, there is great benefit for the agencies and companies willing to go to the whiteboard and figure out how best to use Google as a tool instead of relying on decade-old understandings.

Google has also performed a number of upgrades and changes to its AdWords tool (including the keyword tool) and Analytics package (adding a real-time API for one). It’s increasingly pushing publishers and companies to make sure they are using Google Webmaster Tools. In other words, Google understands these changes can be seen as damaging to their base of advertisers (their main monetary stream, of course).

This trend towards personalization is ushering in a new age of search marketing that is still shaking out and will take years to fully comprehend. In the meantime, keep an eye on Google’s updates to AdWords, Analytics and Webmaster Tools and do your due diligence on how search marketing is changing (for the better).

Will iOS 7 Be Popular?

When I write popular, I don’t mean in the techmeme indy-app eco-bubble, but in terms of the hoi poloi. I think about my “non-techy” friends and family who are all now on iOS (5 and 6 with lots of 4’s and 4s’ still in my circles) and who still have their 1st page of apps set with the default app that shipped with the phone.

I’m not so sure that sentiments like this will be true in the general market:

Aside from a technological standpoint, I think the most important factor to consider is that users cant wait to get their hands on iOS 7. The new version is a major change, and – at least based on my survey of non-geeky friends – I suspect that more people will upgrade more quickly than last year the launch of iOS 6 surely wasnt helped by doubts surrounding Maps.

via iOS 7 Apps and Aggressive Adoption.

While people like to claim that Google is the new Microsoft and Android is the new Windows, I think a little of the reverse is true.

iOS as it has pretty much looked for the last five years is a staid classic. It is the Windows XP of mobile operating systems while Android has gone on ahead slowly-but-surely building on the back of Linux in much the same way OSX built on the Unix desktop.

While Microsoft released Longhorn Vista and the excellent Windows 7 and the disaster of Windows 8, it almost took an act of Congress to get my family and friends away from Win XP and on to more current architecture.

Many of them eschewed Windows 8 because it was so radically different in the public chatterspace (even though it really isn’t) and I see more and more Macs or Chromebooks now.

iOS 7 has the very real possible future ahead of being “too different” from “what just worked.”

While I love Ive’s aesthetic and Apple’s “we know what’s best for you” design ethos, I’m not so sure that iOS 7’s radical color palate, icon design and gaussian blurs (having used iOS 7 for a few weeks for app development myself) will be a hit in the flyover states.

This is a critical time for Apple and iOS. The launch of iOS 7 and the iPhone 5s and/or 5c (and a retina iPad mini?) come at a time of a literal onslaught of excellent Android devices (Nexus 7, Samsung S4, HTC One, LG G2, possible Nexus 5) and Windows Phones (that Lumia one has a pretty nifty camera at least). Contracts are timing out with the release and people are going to be wondering if now’s the time to make a switch… to iOS 7 or something else.

Should be an interesting October.

Your Newsletter Will Be Deleted if Users Can’t Read It On Their Mobile Devices

From a new study by Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey on newsletters and mobile interaction:

The survey of 1,497 consumers found that 80 percent of smartphone owners say it is “extremely important” to be able to read emails on their mobile devices. The study also exposed what could be unfortunate results for marketers who have not yet taken mobile email display into consideration: 75 percent said they are “highly likely” to delete an email if they can’t read it on their smartphone.”

It’s worth your time to go read the full report.

Quotes like this should send a shiver down your spine if you’re still sending out long and non-mobile friendly newsletters to your subscription list:

“The fact of the matter is that consumers are opening emails on their phones first with increasing regularity,” said Jim Garretson, mobile product manager at Constant Contact. “The great thing about mobile emails is that shorter content and fewer calls to action actually perform better than complicated and dense messaging. By simplifying email marketing campaigns, marketers can take an essential and effective step towards becoming mobile-friendly.”

While the study was done by email newsletter provider Constant Contact, the data still points to something that I regularly try to convince clients of… less is more when it comes to newsletters.

Email newsletters are still an incredibly important piece to most, if not all, marketing campaigns. Making sure that your company’s mailings are mobile friendly is not just a nice feature but a requirement in 2013 and beyond.

Affiliate Marketing’s Bad Rap

From VentureBeat courtesy of Scott Jangro on FB:

“Be very careful when you sign up to affiliate networks. Do all your analysis. Profile the traffic, and then make an educated decision for yourself. Even though we were managing to get $200,000 a week of sales for all but nothing, this is not a sustainable business model.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/12/the-big-ugly-affiliate-marketing-scam/#f1Ue76oSercfP2GX.99”

To be honest, I can’t blame the guy. Despite the correct admonitions by affiliate marketing heavyweights in the comments, it’s a shame that an industry with so much promise continues to field a bad reputation from large scale brands (and state governments looking to make tax revenue from affiliate sales).

I love and believe in the affiliate channel, especially when it is “democratized,” but it only takes a few bad actors and not enough storytelling to ruin the message.

Women in Marketing

When I first started in the marketing business, I was in way over my head.

And now, two years later, I’m still in way over my head.

The transition from being a teacher in a classroom into the real world that we only talked about as we gazed out the window wasn’t too easy for me. My first problem was I was a pretty good teacher. I got good reviews. I solved parental issues. I even had the kids who had started the throwing erasers (they were the small pencil top ones) at me stop by Christmas. I still made mistakes of course, but overall I held my own.

But you can’t get buy just holding your own in marketing because even if you try your hardest and even if you blog everyday and even if you learn how to embed affiliate links (not to mention even learning what affiliate links are!), it doesn’t amount to anything if people don’t click and buy. You have to close. No questions. No discussions.

I can spend all day on lead generation and follow up from last week’s lead generation and in the end, it can amount to no money, no gas in the car, no groceries for the week. That was a wake up call to me. I couldn’t just show up and expect someone to give me a gold sticker and pat me on the back.

The second issue I encountered was moving from a profession in which females greatly outweighed males to a profession in which women were almost non-existent. There were many times I was the only woman in the room and many times I wasn’t even spoken to because the assumption was that I was a secretary or personal assistant of some sort.

I’m not going to lie, I spent time whine and whimpering over how unfair and hard it was to be a woman marketer (especially when the contracts I was preparing weren’t being signed), but it didn’t change a thing.

Marketing is hard. It’s hard for the people who have been in it for 15 years, it’s hard for the person who just signed her first contract. It never stops. There aren’t vacation days. Your whole day could change at a moment’s notice.

And here I am…still at it.

Why? Because there’s not another profession that doesn’t allow you to coast…that is if you’re doing it right.

Taking Up the Challenge

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This week, MarketingTrends is turning into a group blog focused on the always fascinating space of online marketing, analytics, trends and thought development. If you’re interested in blogging regularly about this space and want to be a part of something special, email me sam@marketingtrends.co or @samharrelson on Twitter.

I plan on operating much the same way the old ReveNews did with no editorial approval process, comments wide open and actual pay for bloggers (see below for more on that).

MarketingTrends will look different as we move into Phase 2 this week so stay tuned for the new theme and features.

This is something I’ve had planned for a while, but a conversation about ReveNews tonight made me speed up the process.

When Affiliate Summit acquired ReveNews in February of this year, I was elated. As a former editor and publisher of ReveNews (and the one that ushered us through the incredible process of moving from MovableType to WordPress with an updated look/feel in 2008-2009), I have a deep love for the community and ecosystem of thoughtful bloggers and commenters that once made the site a mandatory read for folks in the online marketing industry.

I can even say that it was ReveNews that launched my career in 2002-2003 as I was reading insights from people like Wayne Porter, Jim Kukral, Brian Clark or Jeff Molander and pondering what I could contribute to this industry. They took me in and made me a part of the ReveNews family in 2006.

However, watching ReveNews become just a press release outlet for Affiliate Summit since February has been sad to say the least. This once proud banner stood for insight and thought provocation and real dialogue in an industry still trying to find its own identity (and identities).

While I can’t purchase ReveNews and right that ship, I can take up Shawn’s challenge after I posted my own thoughts about ReveNews’ direction this afternoon.

Here’s the whole Twitter convo:

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To which Shawn replied:

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Good point by Shawn on the previously dwindling but still salvageable content being produced by bloggers there:

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And that’s where things turned. Shawn thinks that “print > group blog” but I find this sort of coasting to be the antithesis of what ReveNews once meant to lots of folks in our industry.

Not to mention that a healthy group blog is, in my mind, needed and required in an industry where the main group voice is behind an editorially produced dead-tree printing that serves as an advertising platform for the main conference of an industry and itself makes its owners money (with a traditional 20th century ad model) without paying its writers.

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I was ready to leave things there and move on agreeing to disagree. Shawn wasn’t ready for that just yet.

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To which I responded with a tongue-in-cheek:

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Which earned this:

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So, we’re taking the challenge.

Moving MarketingTrends to a group blog paradigm is something I’ve had planned for a while, but Shawn’s tweets tonight reinforced my realization that something akin to what ReveNews was in years past is not only needed but required in the online performance marketing space.

Group blogging means turning over some aspects of control, such as in the editorial space. I’ve never liked the idea of a editor to correct grammar or thoughts on something like a blog and our bloggers will have the freedom to post when the spirit moves them, whether on the floor of a trade show with their mobile device or after carefully plotting out a detailed thought piece over a long weekend.

The look and feel of MarketingTrends will reflect its group blog nature and that new theme should be live this week. I’ve got experience doing this and I’m excited about how things are shaping up.

Our revenue model is not just based in a mid-20th century banner display ad model. There will be a few of those ads, but the majority of the revenue to pay bloggers will come from a content-specific marketplace, newsletter placements and micro-transactions. You’ll see what we mean when we roll out the redesign this week.

In many ways, what I wanted to do with ReveNews in 2008 is finally coming to fruition with MarketingTrends in 2013. I’m excited.

I hope you’ll stick around and participate.

Facebook’s Big Problem

Beautiful and well-argued post from The New Inquiry:

Facebook is like a television that monitors to see how much you are laughing and changes the channel if it decides you aren’t laughing hard enough. It hopes to engrain in users the idea that if your response to something isn’t recordable, it doesn’t exist, because for Facebook, that is true. Your pleasure is its product, what it wants to sell to marketers, so if you don’t evince it, you are a worthless user wasting Facebook’s server space. In the world according to Facebook, emotional interiority doesn’t exist. Introspection doesn’t exist, and neither does ambivalence. There is only ostentatious enthusiasm or null dormancy.

It’s worth your brain’s time to go read the entire piece, but the above paragraph is the penultimate one that makes the clearest comparison that non-techies can understand in the middle of talk about algorithms and organic searches.

Facebook’s main problem, in my opinion, is that the company (from the releases to date at least) doesn’t put stock in the power of its many users. Certainly, with a billion or so people using the service that seems like a fantastical idea. However, we continue to see growth in companies like Twitter and Google that, while relying on algorithms themselves, do much more than Facebook to maintain some transparency in their dealings and actively work to include the voice of users beyond what they might want to receive in the form of marketing messages.

When it runs out of its hydrogen and helium, Facebook will inevitably implode because of its own gravity into a black hole that will suck in all of the web or into a cooling dwarf star that is but a shadow of its former self (or a very cool quasar but that’s probably not going to happen). I’m betting on the dwarf star. We’ll look back on this period of the web and wonder what sucked us all in to its gravitational pull and why we fell for it. Books will be written about the cognitive surplus that web users enjoy post-Facebook while relying on services that will still be shining bright like Twitter.

In the meantime, let’s demand more than to be treated like a captive audience from the services we use.

Facebook Kills EdgeRank

From The Next Web:

One of the key pieces of technology Facebook relied on in the past to aid in content discovery was EdgeRank. It was revealed that this form of technology is no longer in use. The company utilized this algorithm that looked at a post’s affinity, weight, and time decay to help determine what post should be at the top of the News Feed for an individual user.

Facebook’s new search algorithm details are definitely interesting. However, the apparent death (in name and brand at least) of the EdgeRank name is completely fascinating to me.

Given Twitter’s recent announcements regarding its (monumental) shift in the approach to search, Facebook had to do something. I just don’t see an algorithm tweak to surfacing user posts as enough.

How Many Clicks Does it Take?

Worth your 2.5 mins for pondering how your click path is best resulting in conversions…

via Forward3D: Are Men Out-Shopping Women Online? – YouTube.

Brands vs retailers aside, this type of data (not sourced but evidently part of an internal study by the presenter) is particularly important for thinking about how your average or median site visitor goes from landing on your site to making a decision.

What type of analytics and tracking are you using to track that route? If you’re looking at only the number of page views, you’re missing out on very valuable data. Do yourself a favor and connect your site to at least Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools and start learning from what your visitors are trying to tell you.

YouTube Introducing Live Streaming For Channels with 100+ Subscribers

One channel that’s particularly valuable for many marketers, particularly in the affiliate industry, is live video (for webinars, etc), so this is great news:

YouTube Creator Blog: Investing in you: more tools to build your channels: “Start live streaming if you have 100+ subscribers: All channels in good standing with at least a hundred subscribers will be able to live stream, within the next few weeks. Check your Account Features page for an ‘Enable’ button, and click it if you’re interested.”