Now we just need to get this narrowed down to states (and eventually zips):
AvantLink Launches Geolocation Affiliate Tool – Affiliate Marketing Blog: “AvantLink has announced an update to their affiliate recruitment and application management tools.
Merchants can now search for affiliates based on the originating country for the majority of an affiliates traffic.”
I have to solidly disagree with this:
RSS still matters a great deal.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ (even Tumblr)…these social gardens with their nice walls are fantastic but social “curation” isn’t the right path ahead for establishing a real presence on the web because you’re always serving a master that could go away.
There’s nothing like having a namespace that identifies and/or reflects you.
It’s something I try to get through to students, clients, friends and family.
That’s why I like the idea of dogfooding the open web and encouraging others to do so. Eventually after the social web bubble pops, we’ll get back to the realization that having yourname.com or some iteration thereof is insanely powerful and needed.
Now that Google Reader is dead, I’m switching back to Fever for my RSS reading. I literally live in my RSS reader and it’s a beyond-valuable piece of technology that drives everything from my business to my research to my studies to my obsessions to my love of history etc. Having a reliable, synced and powerful RSS reader capable of handling the 500 or so feeds I (try to) read on a daily basis is important.
Yes, Fever is a pesky self-installed piece of software that is definitely not for everyone. I’d suggest something like Feedly or Pulse or Flipboard for 99% of people.
However, for those of us who were there when blogging was The Social Network and RSS feed reading was the Newsfeed back in 2004, something like Flipboard just doesn’t cut it.
Fever is fantastic for my needs. Again, it’s a self-install and has minimal amounts of developer involvement, but it’s a fantastic program. The fact that it is self-hosted on my server that I pay for and have to keep up makes me like it even more for some Google-Reader-backlash-lizard-brain reason.
Since I’m mostly on my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 these days when I’m not using my Chromebook or this Macbook Pro Retina, I’ve been testing out Meltdown app as my mobile interface for Fever. It seems to be doing the job just fine at the moment and is a great Android experience for Fever. It’s a no-frills and minimalistic take on feed reading, but that’s exactly what I was looking for.
Maybe Marco is right and it is excellent news for the RSS reader industry (and RSS in general) that Google Reader is shutting down.
For once, I’m glad that I wasn’t at a major tech product release and could watch the debacle unfold via a YouTube livestream from the comfort of home:
Robert Scoble – Google+ – Samsung really screwed up with its Galaxy S4 presentation.…
It’s inevitable, but still sad that Google is shutting down Google Reader rather than letting it (and its valuable API that allows so many services to use it for a syncing backend) die a long and gentle death.
The “social web” is a fascinating beast. When I first started blogging in 2002, I was enamored with the idea of having a domain name that reflected who I was and a place to put my ideas, pictures, scraps, polished pieces and serve as my home base of a digital footprint.
Geeks and folks on the web needed a way to stay in touch with updates from friends and people they were interested in. I experimented with Newsgator, FeedDemon, Liferea (LInux FEed REAder during my time using Ubuntu as my OS from 2006-2009) but finally settled with Google Reader as my hub of consuming online content.
In many ways, Google Reader was the first Facebook NewsFeed for nerds, geeks, web heads and those of us who cared about the web.
When 2006 – 2007 came and birthed Twitter and Facebook’s rapid growth, things changed quickly. The idea of having your own webspace was traded for the ability to leverage something like Twitter or Facebook’s growing user base for exposure. You didn’t have to explain feeds, that ugly orange RSS button or readers to your friends and family and you could just point them to your name. The walled gardens won.
Here’s a great post from Tantek laying out similar themes of loss-yet-optimism for a new hope:
On Silos vs an Open Social Web [#indieweb] – Tantek: “The answer is not to not ‘only [be] relevant to geeks’, but rather, reframe it as a positive, and be relevant to yourself. That is, design, architect, create, and build for yourself first, others second. If you’re not willing to run your design/code on your own site, for your primary identity on the web, day-in and day-out, why should anyone else? If you started something that way but no longer embrace it as such, start over. Go Selfdogfood or go home.”
This can easily be dismissed as one of those “first world problems” for geeks who care too much about whatever the open web happens to be. However, many many people still use the backend plumbing of RSS to do great things and change the world. You use RSS more than you realize anytime you do most anything on the web (outside and inside of walled gardens).
I’ll admit, this has definitely caused me to re-ponder my own web existence. This is a self-hosted WordPress blog, but my personal blog with my name on it at samharrelson.com is hosted through the awesome Shareist service that I love. Should I move that back to self-hosting so that I can self-dogfood?
One of the many things I’ll be pondering in the coming days as I think about the way the web is heading the next few years.
Whether it’s this blog or Thinking.FM or StudiesLab or Harrelson Agency (and even more soon), I can’t agree more with Daniel here…
An Indie State Of Mind – Bitsplitting.org: “Like Marco, I derive a great amount of satisfaction from doing things for myself. Also like Marco, it can sometimes be a fault. No doubt I would benefit in many ways from working for a company or from joining a podcasting network. The resources and reach of these institutions could help me build greater things and get them in the hands of more people. On the other hand, they could force me to build things that suck. Folks like us, we with an indie state of mind, tend to face a far simpler choice: be dissatisfied working for somebody else, or gratified by the thrill of trying our own thing.”
Maybe it’s just my only-child mindset, but I’ve always found it’s a lot more enjoyable to work with people rather than for people.
And that’s the beauty of something like affiliate marketing.
Pinterest has announced their iteration of web analytics for bloggers, businesses and groups with a verified website in the profile of the popular sharing service:
Introducing Pinterest Web Analytics – Pinterest Blog: “Bloggers, businesses, and organizations often ask us, “what are people pinning from my websites?” These website owners help create the content on Pinterest and we wanted to help them understand which pieces of content people find most interesting. Today, we’re pleased to announce Pinterest Web Analytics, a first step towards doing just that. Web Analytics gives site owners insights into how people are interacting with pins that originate from their websites.”
Getting your website verified by Pinterest is a pretty painless and straightforward process involving dropping some code into the header of your site.
Most interesting is the ability to see stats on not just your pins but also repins as well as impressions and clicks. This should make many of the marketers and businesses that have been eyeing Pinterest but not sold on the platform because lack of analytics happy.
This isn’t a good thing for sites such as PinReach that have sprung up to fulfill the need for analytics and insight into Pinterest trends. However, much like Twitter’s once flourishing API coral reef (still a great post six years later), these sites can become interesting platforms to dig deeper or look at other types of social engagement outside of what Pinterest itself offers.
Pinterest is definitely upping the social media involvement ante with businesses as it continues to scale its user base and explore areas of monetization and ad serving in a different path than either Twitter or Facebook.
Instead, look to LinkedIn and Twitter for further innovation in the social networking monetization space.
Hot on the heels of Samsung’s new flagship phone being released with “eye scroll tracking” as a feature comes this interesting piece from TechCrunch on what we might be in store for when marketers can stare back at mobile users…
The Implications of the Interface That Watches You – TechCrunch: “It’s no secret that companies and advertisers have been looking for a way to boost the ROI of mobile ads, Google included. Gathering facial feedback data could act like a cheat code to help marketing get to the next level – provided it isn’t wielded like a heavy, blunt club. The possibility for abuse is tremendous here: imagine ads that periodically migrate to occupy the places where you find the choicest content in an app, or autoplaying video ads that wait until you’re paying close attention before launching into a sales barrage.”
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.
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 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.
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.”
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.”
If you’re an affiliate marketer and you’re not using bitty + IFTTT, then you’re missing out:
Trust me, go play with this service.
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.
You get the point.
This is fun and very helpful. Go and enjoy this awesome free tool.
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).
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).
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.”
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.
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 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.
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.