Comedian Stephen Colbert announced Thursday that he would fund every existing grant request South Carolina public school teachers have made on the education crowdfunding website DonorsChoose.org.
Source: Stephen Colbert funds $800,000 in grants for South Carolina public school teachers
Compare that to this.
I was sad to see no requests from my home county, which is frequently ignored by our state government.
Regardless, good marketing for DonorsChoose!
With the mass hysteria around the Serial podcast at the end of 2014 and the continued excellence of other NPR shows such as This American Life or RadioLab, it’s no surprise that the press and media were eager to claim a “return of the podcast” early in 2015.
Podcasts are nothing new and have been delivering content to folks like me for over a decade since they were first implemented by Dave Winer and Adam Curry. Podcasts have, for better and for worse, always been seen as something of a geeky pursuit. They were never difficult to actually make or listen to, but it just felt as if the technology for mass adoption wasn’t there. We lovers and makers of podcasts sat by while the music industry was transformed first by Napster then iTunes and now streaming, and then the visual media industry was transformed by YouTube and Netflix. We watched promising companies like Ev Williams’ Odeo pivot from podcast transformer to Twitter parent company. We knew we had something good and our time would come.
However, it felt like 2015 was going to be the year of the podcast in terms of mass adoption. It makes sense… technology has finally caught up to the medium. Almost everyone has a mobile device of some sort, more often than they have computers in 2014 and beyond. Most of those mobile device owners are comfortable enough to find media and apps via Netflix or Spotify. There’s been a growing acceptance of the notion of “on demand” media consumption whether it’s House of Cards or the latest comic book on Comixology. Data rates have gotten faster and cheaper (somewhat) and people are more comfortable with downloading or streaming media rather than having it delivered passively by TV and radio. Serial was the siren song of podcasting’s new era. A time when podcasts stopped being just about tech and finally ventured into other mediums. We have Adam Corolla, after all. Surely, if you make “good stuff” and put it out there in your niche, people would find and start listening in 2014. Right?
Short answer: No.
It’s not anymore difficult to make a podcast than it is to make a blog post or even a Facebook post for those willing to trade their digital souls for even more comfort and supposed eyeballs. However, it is still difficult to find an audience for your podcast that makes you “feel” like it’s worth doing.
I have this conversation often with clients who are interested in podcasting as a form of marketing their church, product, startup idea, service etc. “Let’s do this,” I say, “but be aware that this is not going to make it onto any iTunes top charts and you’ll be lucky to have a dozen consistent listeners after a few months if you make it that long.”
That’s because it’s hard to show up week after week (if you’re doing a weekly show, which is what I’d recommend since that’s the accepted format at this point) for months at a time and record yourself talk either solo or with a group, do the post recording work of either editing but definitely uploading, posting it somewhere, and attempting getting the word out only to see that you have 11 listeners to a show four months in. Clients, like all of us, want fast results whether they say it or not. It’s human nature. It’s why we like using Facebook instead of a personal blog to post details of our lives or businesses… people “Like” us there and we get tangible feedback for our time or work or thoughts. “I am important because people listen to me!” is Facebook’s psychology 101.
Podcasting is different. There is little in the way of the gratification machine at work to tell you that you’re doing a good job, even months or perhaps years, into your show. Excellent podcasters like Dan Benjamin will tell you to show up and keep showing up. He’s right. But what about if you’re just starting out. “Is it really worth all that time, then?” my clients ask.
I should have a good answer to that question prepared given how much I hear it and that I’ve ran a podcast network called Thinking.FM since 2011. I came up with the idea in 2009 after I started podcasting in 2008. I did a 22 minute daily show for almost six months. When that show ended, it had a few thousand listeners. “I’m important because people listen to me!” I thought after doing the very hard work of not just talking about something I thought interesting for 22 minutes every day, but also the pre and post work that was required to do a daily show in 2008 (not to mention I was working from home with my newborn daughter who ended up being a frequent guest on the show inadvertently).
Podcasting is still figuring itself out and the mass majority of consumers are still figuring out the medium as well. Sure, there’s an Apple Podcasts app that comes pre-installed on all iPhones now but how many people ever tap on “Tips” or “Newstand” either?
My answer is yes, you should podcast. It is fun. It is hard. It is cost and time intensive. Eventually, it does pay off in ways not measured by Likes or retweets.
For example, my friend Thomas Whitley and I do a podcast called Thinking Religion. It’s an amazing show (I can say that because I’ve been listening to podcasts for a while and we talk about amazingly interesting things from two different perspectives). Our latest show (29th episode) was by far our best:
Prof. Thomas Whitley and Sam Harrelson attempt to bring some thoughtfulness to the topic of religion again this week with a discussion of presidential politics and religion, metaphysics in the public sphere, ISIS and the antiquities black market, and whether we can recover lost texts.
Thinking Religion: Is There An Original New Testament? | Thinking.FM
You can listen by clicking on this player. Go ahead.
After doing the show weekly for almost thirty weeks now, we’re lucky if we have a few hundred listeners. Most times, it’s much less than that.
“But Sam,” you say, “it’s a podcast by two history / religion dorks talking about God knows what for 90 minutes. Why would anybody listen to that?”
Good point if you’re looking to get huge CPM advertising deals from Ford or use your podcast to market your church or your service or your products to millions!
But that’s more than likely not realistic. Moreover, it’s not the best use of your time, money, and resources to go for that goal. Instead, think long term. Think about possible connections and implications of your recorded word and the effects they may have on someone interested in you, your group, your product, your church etc. Think about how you can make someone’s life better, give them hope, solve their problem, or make them dream.
It pays off. Trust me.
Millions of listens and huge advertising payoffs are not the intent of Thinking Religion or Thinking.FM in general. It’s also not the point of any of the podcasts I help my clients do and promote. Instead, quality means more than quantity. That’s the reason I personally despise Facebook as both a personal medium and as a marketing medium for churches and non-profits and startups… it reinforces the notion of immediacy when it comes to Likes and feedback response. It’s a Skinner box (that’s a podcast I did with my wife, Merianna) with no sense of permanence or longevity. In my practice of marketing, permanence and longevity mean everything.
That’s why I podcast. I want to plant sequoias and say that my main crop is the forest I did not plant. Go and do likewise.
My old (well he’s not old, but our friendship is) friend Thomas wrote a great piece in response to a question about why he still blogs in 2015 given that we have tools such as Facebook, Twitter etc to make our points.
What he says is not only applicable to academics, but also to non-profits, religious orgs, and for profit companies. Whether we like to grapple with the issue, you or your company or your group or your church has a “brand” that is being perceived by those who come into contact with you. Being aware of that is crucial.
You should be thinking of these things if you or your group wants to participate on the internet (beyond a Facebook page):
Related to this is the larger idea of controlling my “brand.” Though many academics have resisted the move toward “branding,” it has long been a part of academia. One’s credentials, what they’ve written, and where they’ve taught make up their brand and determine, to a large extent, who reads them, who assigns them, and who thinks of them for panel invitations and professional society nominations. Branding has only become more important with the ubiquity of information readily available on the internet. It is important for me, as an academic in general but also as someone on the job market, that when someone searches for me on the internet, they find me and find what I want them to find about me (namely, my website, my work for other outlets, etc.). Moreover, as I think about my personal brand, it forces me to think about where my priorities are and what impression I want people to get of me. This is, of course, no different than how we should be thinking even sans internet (the same thinking goes into job application materials, for instance).
Advertising agencies haven’t changed very much since the 1950’s. Sure, most of the larger agencies have tacked on “digital” departments and made a number of acquisitions in the past decade to make themselves more agile and responsive to evolving client needs.
However, I was watching MadMen with my wife last night, and I remarked on how similar some of the agencies I work with act as if they were Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce rather than an agency responsive to 2015 needs. The “rebate” is just one of a number of issues facing larger agencies and their feeder smaller agencies in the coming decade as clients and marketers wise up and demand more transparencies…
The rebates stem from the arrangements that some agencies have in place with media sellers that reward them for spending more. If the agency chooses to direct more of their clients’ budgets to specific vendors, the agency may receive lower ad rates, free ad space or even cash.
“Emerging concerns among marketers around different forms of agency rebates in the United States causes us to partially (if slightly) re-assess some of our views on long-term holding company growth,” Mr. Wieser wrote in the research note. “With a drumbeat of negativity to come from marketers only now learning about the issue, we recommend investors move to sidelines or exit the sector for the time being.”
via Ad Agencies Downgraded by Pivotal Research on Rebate Concerns – CMO Today – WSJ.
My team primarily uses Dropbox for our file storage and sharing. It was a back-and-forth battle for a while between Google Drive (since we use Google Apps for email, calendars etc) and Dropbox, and we still do use Drive for some project management. Even a few of our clients prefer it as they are already using Drive and Google Apps themselves.
However, our official party line is on the Dropbox side now because of its integration with other apps that we also rely on to get things done like Podio, Slack, and Freshbooks.
The biggest downside of going with Dropbox over Drive for me (#firstworldproblem) has been when I’m traveling or doing some quick catch up work at home outside of the office. That’s because I typically take my Chromebook (currently a Toshiba Chromebook 2 but that new Pixel is wearing on my will power) during those times. Editing a Word document or Excel sheet from a client or team member is definitely not as smooth on a Chromebook as working on a shared Google Doc or Sheet. So, I would resort to downloading the document from Dropbox and opening it as a Google Doc then redownloading when I was finished and reuploading it to the appropriate Dropbox folder. I also kept a zombie copy of many working docs in my Google Drive just so I could access them on the road, but they weren’t always up-to-date and current. It was a subtle pain that always annoyed me.
Until this announcement this week. I’ve tried it a few times now and it’s seamless and works great.
Thanks, Dropbox and Microsoft, you solved my workflow issue! Looks like I’ll be using Office Online a great deal more in the coming months…
What does that mean for you? For starters, you don’t need the desktop versions of Microsoft Office — or even your own computer — to update any Office files stored in your Dropbox. Just click the ‘Open’ button when you’re previewing a Dropbox file on the web, and you can edit the file right from your browser via Office Online. Any changes will automatically be saved back to your Dropbox.
You’ll also be able to access your Dropbox directly from Office Online, so you can open any of your Dropbox files — and save new files to Dropbox — without leaving Office Online.
via Dropbox launches integration with Microsoft Office Online | Dropbox Blog.
I started reading and writing about GigaOm way back in 2006 or 2007 with the advent of CostPerNews. When Arrington sold TechCrunch, I was glad that at least sites driven by their creators such as GigaOm were still there (post Read/WriteWeb etc etc).
I was sad to see that GigaOm and company are now shutting down due to lack of funding.
The web is changing and all things drift towards entropy. But GigaOm was one of those sites that employed tech writers I loved to read like Kevin Tofel and Matthew Ingram. It’s disheartening to see an outlet like that not able to survive in 2015.
Here’s to a better web that supports great writers.
I’m guessing this was written by someone who either was callous or someone who was disinterested…
A brief note on our company
Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.
— Gigaom management
We’ve known for a few months that Google was going to start ranking websites based on their ability to be displayed on mobile devices such as phones and tablets as well as traditional laptops and desktops. Looks like April 21 is the big day to have made the switch to a mobile-friendly site:
Big news from Google today: beginning April 21, the company will increase the ranking of sites that are mobile-friendly.
via Google Will Rank Your Site Higher If It’s Mobile Friendly.
Why is this important for non-profits, churches, religious groups, and community orgs in addition to startups and small businesses (most of our clients)?
Because even though search has had to share the limelight with social networks in terms of being “found” and “discovered” on the web, it’s still incredibly important to rank as well as you can in Google as search is still dominant.
You simply can’t afford to have a website that doesn’t display properly on an iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone etc after April 2015.
Interesting thread here from a non-profit group looking for good, but cheap, marketing. We hear this every day (multiple times) as Harrelson Agency mainly focuses on helping non-profits, religious groups, community organizations, and startups get marketing right.
My solution? Realize that marketing is an investment, and one that you should budget for wisely but not try to push off to someone on your internal team who doesn’t have the time or skills to do more than update your Facebook page.
How does my startup hire an affordable marketing expert?
We’re a non-profit niche social networking company serving a minority group. We are have a volunteer working on marketing our pending web social network app, however as CEO, I’m looking forward to hire an expert in web marketing tactics mainly to help make our launch a successful one.
The main role of the person is with helping us plan with our marketing strategies as well as helping us implement them. We are very hard pressed with resources, what’s the best way to hire one which we can afford, at say a rate of $10/hr or even less. I really do not have trust in freelance websites because of the poor quality I’ve received from them so far.
via How does my startup hire an affordable marketing expert? — Clarity.
Wow, what a metaphor about consumer culture…
“What caused the problem with movie theaters is not Netflix, but YouTube,” she says. “What is making the old temples crumble is not smaller temples, but it’s rather this kind of polytheism—you know, you make your own gods.”
We’re big fans and users of Freshbooks for our online accounting, invoicing, and payment software.
It’s interesting to see GoDaddy teaming up with PayPal, Stripe, and Dwolla to offer their own “Get Paid” solution for people and businesses as a small monthly fee starting at $3.99
GET PAID
Everything you need to get paid
Get paid on any device—mobile phone, laptop, tablet
Accept credit cards, checks, PayPal, bank payments
Create and send invoices online and on your mobile phone
via Get Paid | Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow – GoDaddy.
I suspect this will attract small businesses and folks who want a quick solution without all the hassle that setting up online payment options can cause for those who are less tech literate or strapped for time (and cash).
I also wonder how much this will impact the growing area of online invoicing that our beloved Freshbooks, Stripe, banks etc are already inhabiting after inheriting the space from the ancient Quickbooks ancestor.
Testing is great. Finding a better solution by gathering data is one of the reasons our species has developed and survived. The same is true for solid results on websites, and using tools such as “A/B testing” to determine the best outcome is a worthwhile endeavor for small businesses, churches, community groups, and non-profits with a website…
At many Web publishers, such decisions can lead to impassioned arguments, fruitless debates, even hurt feelings. But 1-800-Dentist doesn’t leave it to chance or opinion. Instead it runs an experiment. It launches two or more versions of a Web page, and then watches as users react. After thousands of people have visited, one version will have edged out the others with a statistically significant improvement in the number of sign-ups.
via A/B Testing for Websites Redraws the Web | MIT Technology Review.
However, there are downsides to relying solely on tools such as A/B testing and the resulting data when it comes to web design (also from the link above)…
In fact, intensive testing appears to be reshaping what the Web looks like. But the page designs that are succeeding won’t win any awards for art direction, just as listicles don’t win Pulitzers. Even proponents of optimization technology admit it can produce sites with simple, cookie-cutter looks.
But A/B testing is spreading because it’s become easy to do. Optimizely says it can pick a winning design after as few as 100 visits for sites that have never been optimized. In practice, running experiments is often much harder. At 1-800-Dentist, which is based in Los Angeles, Kharkats says he’s testing text and images for several slightly different landing pages and estimates that he will need 150,000 visitors to each in order to detect a difference. That could take months, he says.
So, do some testing (we always do). Let it help you guide your path towards a better website or search campaign or poster design.
But, use your gut and trust your instincts (or the instincts of the agency you hire to help you out). After all, we’re humans, not robots.
After reading this study on how 60% of Gen Y professionals think they’re entrepreneurs (found via Jim Kukral‘s Facebook post), I remembered an “old” post from 2011 that described the millennial generation (born in late 70’s up to ’90) as “Generation Sale.” A little googling helped me find the NY Times piece.
It’s a spot on good read:
The small business is the idealized social form of our time. Our culture hero is not the artist or reformer, not the saint or scientist, but the entrepreneur. (Think of Steve Jobs, our new deity.) Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurship comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.
AND that, I think, is the real meaning of the Millennial affect — which is, like the entrepreneurial ideal, essentially everyone’s now. Today’s polite, pleasant personality is, above all, a commercial personality. It is the salesman’s smile and hearty handshake, because the customer is always right and you should always keep the customer happy. If you want to get ahead, said Benjamin Franklin, the original business guru, make yourself pleasing to others.
I was born in 1978, so I’m not sure where exactly I fall in the Gen Y / Gen Millennial grouping. I grew up loving Nirvana, grunge, and the entire “Nevermind” aesthetic but find myself enjoying artisanal pizza.
Nevertheless, “millennials” will change how we do marketing and advertising (and business in general). You can see the differences in food truck lines, churches that make lifelong members uncomfortable, expectations for work place experiences, and how we view the concept of “jobs” in 2014.
So be prepared.
We’re big fans of Shareist in our office and in the work we do with contractors and clients around the world. In a nutshell, Shareist is a way to manage all of your (or a client’s) social media and content creation accounts with a high degree of team collaboration under one umbrella. We use it alongside Basecamp as our company’s project management backbone.
I was honored to be asked by the Shareist team to do a chat on how we’re using the tool in our agency and for the improvement of our clients’ campaigns.
Here’s a snippet, but go read the full case study on the Shareist Blog:
Harrelson, whose clients including political organizations, religious groups, local retailers and services, brands, authors and more, says Shareist solves many of problems of how to communicate and keep in touch – for both his team and his clients.
Shareist ensures that everyone on his team has immediate access to add, share, comment, collaborate and manage their client’s projects – which run the gamut from affiliate management, social media marketing, event marketing, political messaging, to billboards and T-shirts.
I’ve been using Shareist since it first launched years ago and can’t recommend it enough if you or your team does any sort of social media or web content creation and need a tool to help manage all the disparate social web apps and accounts that you have to participate in to be truly effective in 2014 and beyond.
I’m excited that we’re launching a couple of new services for clients and potential clients this weekend (gotta beta test, you know… weekends are the best time for that!). We already offer our clients some pretty excellent services from overall marketing strategies to website design and development to social media management to affiliate marketing management to product design and development to billboards to … well I could go on forever.
However, we’re primarily offering these services to people or businesses or groups or churches on a more limited budget that want to have the ability to work with a marketing agency but might not have the funds to do so in the capacity that most agencies require:
1) Have Your Own Company/Church/Group Website: We’ve been calling this “Project Willie” for a couple of reasons we won’t disclose (to quote Willie), but the idea is that for an one time payment of $499 and $50 a month for hosting costs, you’ll get a professional and responsively designed clean and unique website that will serve you well for years and years.
We talk to so many businesses/groups/people/churches who want a well designed site on their own hosting plan but can’t afford the thousands of dollars it can take to accomplish that.
This is my attempt to help with that.
So for $499 and the $50 in hosting, they’ll get a great site, unique logo, email addresses, a web host, etc.
2) Learn About Your Own Site (why aren’t people finding us? why aren’t we ranking better in Google?): We’ve been calling this Project Waylon, and the idea is that you’ll get a complete diagnostic of your site at a high quality level from the point of view of a marketing agency that works with Fortune 100 companies on these same topics for $199. Phone calls or emails…whatever is most convenient for you.
Not only that, we’ll hook your site up to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools and make sure you have the tools and insights you need to have a site that people discover and share.
It seems like common sense, but there’s a literal ton involved in figuring this stuff out, and we’re hoping to share our expertise with you for a reasonable cost.
More soon!
http://www.indiegogo.com/project/646883/widget/2785874
We’ve spent the last six months working hard with Jack Krupnick and Fred Heys to launch ZeroScope. To say this has been a labor of love for Jack and his family would be an understatement. I’m so excited to see this project get its wings and move from pre-planning to production to full on launching this month.
Today, we’re launching an IndieGoGo campaign to help fund the manufacturing costs of the ZeroScope devices.
This is a very worthwhile cause and here’s a little info from the campaign page:
“Your doctors and nurses wash their hands, wear gloves, sometimes wear a mask, and cover or seal many of the instruments they use to provide you with healthcare. But why are stethoscopes not included?
We aim to solve that problem.
Stethoscopes should not be a cause of the spread of disease by healthcare providers. ZeroScope is a one-use and easily applied device that attaches to the drum of a stethoscope and provides immediate and complete barrier defense between the instrument and the patient receiving care.
We’re looking to raise the money needed to help us launch ZeroScope as a cost effective and ubiquitous device to solve the problem of hospital acquired infections that lead to more costly treatments or even death.”
We’ve made some huge leaps and bounds over the last 182 days since our first brainstorming session. We’ve had our first large batch of devices designed and manufactured and invested so much of our own personal time and money into the project. So, we’re looking for help to get the costs of manufacturing and shipping lower in order to provide more ZeroScopes to hospitals, clinics, burn clinics, urgent cares and physician practices.
It’s been an amazing ride, and we’re hoping you’ll help us reach our goal!
When I was seven (maybe eight) years old, I decided that I was going to start my own company one day. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and DIY’ers. My dad has run his own business my entire life. My grandfather before him did the same and dabbled in a number of areas. I blame my dad and “Grandpa Frank” for my compulsion to have my own business, and to dabble myself in many different areas of entrepreneurship from marketing to publishing to racing to a music label to a few things I haven’t made public.
When I decided to make my own business at that early age, I knew I needed a good name and a good logo. I had notebooks full of drawings for imaginary baseball teams and comic book characters that hadn’t found their homes yet, so I knew my company logo would need to be something special. One Sunday morning, I remember seeing a piece of crystal in my family’s china cabinet in our living room that had a very calligraphic “H” etched into it. I decided that the logo would be an H and I would name my company “Harrelson Corporation.” I didn’t know what Harrelson Corps was going to do yet, but I had a name and a good idea for a logo.
Decades later, I sit in my office in downtown Columbia and look over our company’s client list. Things are going well. I was right all those years ago.
When I’m in my hometown of Mullins, SC I like to visit my Grandpa Frank’s grave. He passed away when I was only three and I’m sad to say that I really don’t remember him as a person. However, he’s been a large presence in my life and I always use his name when I get that silly “Who would you want to have an hour long conversation with if you could talk to any human – living or dead – for 60 minutes?” question. I think we would have much to talk about and I know he could give me some good advice on running a company / companies and what it takes to tread down the untrodden path of starting your own business/es.
I was back in Mullins for just a few minutes on Tuesday and stopped by his grave where I took a picture of that H above. His gravesite has four H’s at each corner and it matches the font on his tomb. I think it’s a great stylistic choice and I was taken aback for a moment when I realized that Grandpa Frank still has such a large role in my own professional and personal life as to inspire me with the font on his grave.
When you start a company, you have to know the starting point. You might never get to the end point or finish line, but you have to have a point where you know that this is what you’ve decided to do and understand that after this singular point in your life, nothing will ever be the same. That realization came at an early age for me but has been an extended realization over the last 25 (or so) years.
You also have to know where you come from in terms of your own identity and backing. Even though Grandpa Frank has been dead for some 32 years, he’s been there (in my own head at least) coaching me on the way to starting this agency and helping me to find people to surround it and make it into something that will last so that my children will one day be able to work with us (if they hopefully choose to do so).
So start your business. Go out on a limb. But don’t forget where you come from and don’t let those 3 A.M. panic attacks keep you from hearing the still small voices of your biggest supporters.
We’re going to be doing more blogging about marketing, business building, and ways to help your business or non-profit or church grow in 2014.
We’ve got a long archive over in the sidebar, but it’s time to get back in gear!
Interestingly enough, Sony has been a great study for how businesses (large and small) can leverage Pinterest to drive traffic and revenue back to a site.
Sony has done a great job of not just community evangelization and using Pinterest as a place to engage current and potential customers, but they have also successfully cross promoted their own account there with promotional emails to existing newsletter subscribers.
The one thing many companies, especially in the performance marketing industry, look over when creating social media campaigns is the need to promote accounts via something like an existing newsletter subscriber base. By combining those two, there’s a great potential left on the table for many companies…
Pinterest Suggestions from Sony
1. Send a dedicated Pinterest email to showcase your boards and encourage following
2. Add the Pin It button next to product shots in emails to get people pinning
3. Create unique boards that appeal to different groups of people
via Sony: Making email more interesting with Pinterest | Pinterest for Business.
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
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.
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.
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.
Interesting…
Social Media Drives In-Store Buying Nearly As Much as Online Buying – HootSuite Social Media Management: “Interviews with close to 6,000 social media users found that Facebook is the social network that drives the most users to purchase. Contrary to popular belief, the data also indicated that social media drives in-store buying at an equal rate as online buying.”
This kind of data is great because many local businesses don’t realize that social media can drive local sales as well as online sales. Many businesses who don’t rely on online sales are reluctant to test social media campaigns for their own efforts because what frequently exists is the belief that full-on social media campaigns (as opposed to social media presences) are only for businesses who make most of their profits on the internet.
Social media is an invaluable resource that you should either be using already or testing extensively to see what it can do for your business.
(And if you need help, we’re always happy to help.)
Very exciting news from Foursquare today:
Expanding Foursquare Ads to more small businesses around the world | Foursquare Blog: “The idea behind these new ads is simple – connect people looking for somewhere to go with businesses that want to drive traffic to their stores. Foursquare is the best way for those businesses to reach nearby customers. In our ad pilots over the past year, we’ve been honing our targeting technology, using the same algorithm that powers our Explore recommendation engine.”
Foursquare rolled out post-check-in ads for brands last week, but this is good news for businesses since Foursquare is a unique but diverse community that’s ultimately very locally focused.
The reason these ads are so unique and will matter a great deal to local businesses in the coming year or so is that the return rate on them is fairly solid. 78% of people who search on their smartphone end up making some kind of purchase. Foursquare has long needed a solid business model that could drive revenue its way and the ad program is pretty much the icing on the cake.
On the business side of things, the ads are billed to businesses on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis, meaning you don’t have to pay for the ad unless a check-in at your business originates from it:
Foursquare Ads — Foursquare for Business: “You won’t pay a cent for your ad to show up. You’ll only pay if people visit you.”
Pretty cool.
I love Foursquare and I’m happy to see them moving forward. Advertising on mobile, particularly geolocation-based, has long been an enigma to many companies and marketers alike and I think Foursquare is definitely on the list of companies to watch.
I’d have to disagree with this…
Blogging is Dead – But Long Live the Blogosphere – exploreB2B: “While the thought process remains the same today (‘Here is what I think, read my blog’) – the effect is minimal, if anything at all. A viewer may read an article on your blog, maybe even find it interesting, but then never return. Memory of the author, ideas in the post (and certainly the URL), are long forgotten amongst the array of activity online.”
The main reason I would disagree with the sentiment that “blogging is dead” is because it isn’t. Sure, the concept, tools, and way we write our blogs today have changed since the inception of blogging back in the late 90s and early 2000s, but blogging is far from dead.
Even though people aren’t doing the type of hyper-personal blogging which they were doing back in the late 90s and early 2000s anymore, blogging as a medium is still very valid and a great way to carve out your own space on the web. Blogging is a key part of what we consider the open web since it uses “old-school” components like RSS and a blog isn’t a walled garden you have to log into. The type of trade-offs you have with walled gardens such as Facebook are nonexistent when you start your own site given that you run it on your own server, etc. It’s a geeky process and takes a little bit of heavy lifting here and there, but it’s worth it considering that you keep control over what you do.
I started my first blog (and I still write there) on a whim back in July 2011 and I can honestly say it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on the web. The magnificent thing about writing your own site is that you can learn so much from others and yourself. You practice and become a better writer and as you devote a little more time to it here and there, you learn about a few other things too (like design, SEO, moving things around on a server, and what you should and shouldn’t put on a site). Looking back at some posts I wrote in 2011 and last year, I have to cringe and scratch my head a great deal, but that’s part of the learning process that comes with anything on the web.
I’ve learned a ton and continue to learn from writing my own site and writing here on MarketingTrends. I’ve blogged elsewhere in the past, but there’s something about writing your own blog that’s so satisfying and in a way, fulfilling to yourself as a writer and user of the internet. While folks who say that blogging is dead have a point because the way we view blogs and publishing in 2013 has changed and adapted a lot over the years, declaring blogging “dead” isn’t justified. Blogging, while old-school (also see email marketing and RSS, neither of which are “dead”), is still one of the best ways to build a solid reputation and name for yourself on the web.
I’d say the feeds that I’m subscribed to in my RSS reader of choice (currently ReadKit) are a solid 50/50 split between bigger sites and smaller blogs written by folks in the industry or just people whose stuff I enjoy reading.
One of the first things I tell anyone looking to go beyond the walled garden principle on the web is for them to go buy a domain name. It’s dead simple and pretty inexpensive. If they want to go beyond that, I’d tell them to go get their hands dirty with a hosted solution first (Tumblr is great for this and I also love Shareist) and eventually move their stuff over to a self-hosted WordPress site (or Movable Type if you’re into that). With all the things we have at hand in 2013 (Squarespace, WordPress, etc), there’s no excuse for why you shouldn’t have your own space on the web.
“And if your words are good, people will read them.”
Thanks for reading our blog.
Devin