Discovery in Your Comments

Disqus keeps improving both as a commenting and discussion platform but especially as an advertising platform.

Disqus gets in right in a critical way. They aren’t selling their advertising strategy to only publishers or only advertisers. They also aren’t leaving out users.

Just as we talk of Discovery as a combination of three things (paid search, SEO and social media marketing), Disqus is using the term “Discovery” as the linchpin for their strategy towards both publishers and advertisers (and especially users).

From TheNextWeb:

In addition, it keeps on improving its algorithm to increase the targeting of the content it recommends. Relevance is key here; it means that publishers can boost page views and drive traffic to advertisers without annoying their readers. This is the challenge of Disqus’ model, but also its power, as it focuses on three parties at once: publishers, advertisers and users.

We’ll be experimenting with Disqus’ model in a few weeks with a new client and can’t wait to see the results. We’ll def report back when we have some hard data.

In the meantime, go explore how comments, discussion and user interaction can also mean a better experience for your business for you and the people you’re trying to have discover you.

Social TV Rating from Nielsen and Twitter

Fascinating on many levels but especially the notion of analytics and real-time engagement (something performance marketers have acknowledged for a while but larger brands are slowly realizing):

Nielsen and Twitter Establish Social TV Rating: “Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy, and Twitter today announced an exclusive multi-year agreement to create the ‘Nielsen Twitter TV Rating’ for the US market. Under this agreement, Nielsen and Twitter will deliver a syndicated-standard metric around the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter, slated for commercial availability at the start of the fall 2013 TV season.”

Yahoo’s “New” Ad Format

I’ve got a long long history dealing with co-registrations and lead generation going back to the halcyon days before 2003 when email marketing was all the rage (still should be) and FreeSlide was just a twinkle in our performance marketing eyes.

I’m not a defender of the admittedly very tacky and mostly illegal tactics that many “marketers” employed to get iPod-wanting visitors with a zip code and an email address zipping down registration paths towards free Gevalia coffee pots or Netflix DVD’s, but the registration path become an essential part of performance marketing during this “wild west” (as we called it) period.

So, it’s interesting to see Yahoo roll out a new Cost Per Lead (CPL in the industry lingo) ad format in its search results that looks strikingly familiar…

Yahoo Intros Cost-Per-Lead Search Ads, First New Format Under Marissa Mayer: “The new ad format, which can collect information like demographics, email addresses or phone numbers, is called Cost Per Lead for Search. It’s clearly marked as ‘Ad from’ with the advertiser’s name following.”

Square and Disruption

Square Gift Cards from Square on Vimeo.

We make no secret of our love for Square and the ability to democratize transactions to the point of making our on-the-go clients very very happy. We even gave them out as stocking stuffers to clients.

We couldn’t be more excited about Square’s new gift card functionality that will surely make a few of the great folks we work with happy as well (especially during the holiday season):

Square Introduces Gift Cards: The Slow Death Of Physical Credit Cards And Cash Continues | TechCrunch: “Today, payment service Square has introduced a new way to send gift cards, through its Square Wallet app. You can now go through all of the businesses that use Square to process payments, pick the right one for your friend or family member, and then purchase them a gift card of in amount of your choosing.”

It can only be a matter of time before Square gets acquired by Apple (I think). It’s an obvious partnership and makes sense given how disruptive Square is becoming to local payment industries.

New in WordPress 3.5

We’re super excited about the upcoming release of WordPress 3.5 as we use the insanely flexible and competent WordPress content management platform for our own blog as well as a a number of client sites (especially in the affiliate and performance marketing world).

MediaTemple, who we use for hosting this site and can’t recommend enough to others who need server hosting, has put together a great post about the new features of WordPress…

(mt) Media Temple » Weblog » Blog Archive » What’s New in WordPress 3.5: “WordPress 3.5 is set to be released this Monday, December 10! What can you expect from the new upgrade? In this article, we will cover the basics of the new default theme, Twenty Twelve, the new Media Manager, and some lesser known but very useful features that will be a part of 3.5.”

We’ll post our experiences with 3.5 next week after we’ve had a few days to kick the tires.

The Value of No Interface

It’s not intuitive, but it is beautiful:

The best interface is no interface | Cooper Journal: “It’s time for us to move beyond screen-based thinking. Because when we think in screens, we design based upon a model that is inherently unnatural, inhumane, and has diminishing returns. It requires a great deal of talent, money and time to make these systems somewhat usable, and after all that effort, the software can sadly, only truly improve with a major overhaul.”

For a generation or two raised on detailed instruction manuals and websites with overwhelming options and menus, the idea of a clean and interface-less experience for users is painful… however it just might be what you need.

SEO on the Cheap

We get lots of questions from folks interested in ​improving their position in Google searches but who aren’t quite ready to jump into a paid solution like we offer.

​If you’re looking for “cheap SEO” (we didn’t coin this term), you’re in luck and have quite a few options. Here are a few free resources that you should definitely consider:

​1. Create an account for your site or blog with Google Analytics. If you have a Google Account (GMail), you’re halfway there. Google Analytics isn’t perfect, but it’s more than most folks new to SEO or site optimization will ever need.

2. Sign up for Google Webmasters Central. It has a little bit of a learning curve but the payoff is certainly worth the thirty minutes you’ll spend. From learning about sitemaps to addressing problems that the GoogleBot might have indexing certain pages or parts of your sites, Webmasters Central is a goldmine of a reference site.

3. If you happen to have your site or blog on WordPress as a self-install (you pay a host like MediaTemple or BlueHost and install WordPress on a server yourself… not wordpress.com), then check out the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. Yoast does a great job of walking you through easy steps to make your WordPress site more “Google Friendly” and will help you optimize options like your sitemaps and XML. Again… nothing free is perfect, but it’s a good start.

4. SEOMoz has a great page on what to expect when expecting Do-It-Yourself keyword management. Keyword research is insanely important. We stress this so much with our clients and we’re always amazed when people overlook this critical component of website and brand success. This is part of a larger book and not completely up-to-date, but will help you get a start when you’re ready to start dabbling with AdSense.

As always, get in touch with us when you’re ready to take your site or business to the next level. As strange as it sounds, we love helping people discover the power of search and what it can mean to their business, especially when combined with a healthy social media plan. But start playing with these tools and see what you can do for yourself.​

First Fall 5K

For some reason last year, I didn’t run in many fall 5Ks and as I was running and training this summer, I realized I missed the scene and the energy that encompass a Saturday morning run for a good cause. 

Asheville is the perfect place to get re-engaged in the running scene (although I would suggest hiding in the middle of the pack and not pushing your way to the front of the start line) because you have people who are passionate about running and people who are passionate about helping! 

It’s intoxicating to be a part of this kind of community and to understand the world is bigger than you and your own issues. 

So as I sit here drinking my post race coffee, I am happy that I was able to support Autism Society of NC and Harrelson Agency

Oh, but I am definitely checking out the course map next time so as not to be surprised by quarter mile hills that lurk around mile 2!

Contact

We encourage our clients to embed a contact form into their websites because :

  1. it transfers communication about bookings and/or business to their website rather than their inbox with their dentist appointments and child’s soccer schedule. 
  2. the form collects valuable data that can be used for other purposes ​

Plus, when you realize how many people really want to contact you, it makes you feel good inside!