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Google and Yelp: Can’t You Guys Just Get Along?

Written on August 26, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

If you were characterize the relationship between Google and Yelp these days it would have to occur on a sliding scale that runs between contentious and bearable. Let’s face it, they don’t get along well and each new event in the relationship adds some more drama.

Yelp has rebuffed a Google attempt to buy the service at the end of last year and they have recently been in a spat over the use of Yelp reviews in Google Place Pages. This little battle was based on both the use of the reviews at all and where they were usually placed (which was at the end of the line behind Zagat’s and others).

Now it appears that Google has taken Yelp results out of their Place Page results entirely. According to TechCrunch

From our checks, it seems like Google has completely omitted Yelp reviews from Google Places . As you may recall, Yelp has been frustrated by Google’s recent decision to pump up its Places service with Yelp’s content— without Yelp’s consent.

During a recent interview with TechCrunch TV, Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said he was surprised by Google’s move but was confident that it was not a “permanent situation, from what we gather from talking to Google, they are sort of headed in a new direction that which hopefully will be more positive.”

If positive means that those results have been scrubbed from Place Pages (or appears to have been across the board) then Yelp wins. If it meant something else well then that sliding scale of this complex relationship is moving back toward contentious pretty quickly.

I don’t know all the ins and outs of Google and Yelp’s agreement to exist in relative peace but if I were Yelp I can’t imagine how being in Google Place pages hurts your efforts. There are many other third party reviews that show up in Place Page results and that can only help those sites with both credibility and potential traffic. I suspect that Yelp has a mild case of “my ‘you know what’ doesn’t stink!”. In other words, since they view themselves as better than others they will expect something in return (money) which is only natural. That kind of arrangement between these two blew up in the past though.

Also in the past, Yelp has shown extreme arrogance in some selling ‘techniques’ that were causing SMB’s cry extortion when it came to removing malicious reviews from the site. Any company that does that and has to wait to get its hand slapped before making a change has got some issues. This attitude is just playing out in other business relationships as well. Maybe it’s just a culture thing with Yelp.

Not sure how this will all play out but as Google’s move toward mobile continues and their concentration on Place Pages importance increases it may be Yelp that comes crawling to Google for some help in the future. Or not.

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Google and Yelp: Can’t You Guys Just Get Along?

De-Mystifying Cost Per Action and Its Impact On Search Marketing: Webcast next Tuesday

Written on August 20, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, marketing, seo

Next Tuesday at Search Marketing Now, Jeremiah Andrick, Online Customer Acquisition Manager at Logitech will discuss Cost Per Acquisition (CPA — what it is, how to calculate it, and how it affects search marketing. This webcast will cover the relationship between CPA, SEO, PPC as well as how to calculate your CPA and how [...]



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Ask Asks If the Human Element Will Help Its Search Business

Written on July 27, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

Ask has always been the red-headed stepchild of the search industry. It’s always lurking in the shadows as the #4 search engine and usually gets a mention in search share only if there was significant up or down movement. Accounting has the Big 4 but search only has the Big 3 which is soon to be the Big 2 ½ or something once bing and Yahoo fully consummate their relationship. Ask is usually not included in those talks but is making changes to differentiate itself and hopefully make more of a splash in that area. The key to that hope: good ol’ fashioned human beings!

The Ask blog reports

Today we’ve officially launched the public beta for the new Ask.com, which combines our proprietary answers technology (specifically tailored to extract questions and answers from the Web) with the human insight of the thriving Ask.com community drawn from our 87 million monthly uniques. Now available on an invite-only basis (you can request your invite here), the capability to pose questions to real people is now possible for those complex, subjective and/or time-sensitive queries that, no matter how advanced, computers simply can’t address.

That means that Ask.com is now uniquely able to offer the most comprehensive and convenient approach to getting answers, combining pages and people to help users find the answers to all questions – even questions for which no answer is published online.

In the search world there may just be a place for this kind of service if it can catch on with people who are ‘blue text link trained’ like myself. In this age of social media and trusting sources that reach far beyond our truly trusted circle of friends (be that a good or bad thing, it still is) there may be more of an acceptance of this approach.

Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove sums up the improvements for you

The beta offering is a product of four new features: a completely overhauled look with a focus on highlighting trending questions from the community, semantic search with answers displayed on the page, a large Q&A database and a user community element that targets members for answering questions based on their areas of expertise. The latter somewhat mirrors Aardvark’s formula for finding answers to user questions, and is initiated when users click the “Ask the Community” button on the right-hand side of the results page.

Even if this Q & A approach seems to be somewhat antiquated it could have some legs if for no other reason than it looks different. Once again, though, Ask needs to drive people to the site and in the past their approach has been mass advertising pushes that come on real strong then disappear. There has been very little attempt to keep the Ask brand in the mind of the searcher in a way to help them possibly convert from Google or somewhere else to the new Ask.

I have always hoped that Ask would put together something that was worthy of challenging bing and Yahoo! to at least push them a bit. Whether this approach is the answer certainly is a big TBD.

If it’s not the answer then the next question has to be, is there a place for Ask at the search table or is it time to move on and look for someone else to challenge the Big 3 (or 2 1/8 or whatever it’s going to be)?

Your thoughts?

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Ask Asks If the Human Element Will Help Its Search Business

Coca-Cola Gets Slammed For Vulgar Facebook Campaign

Written on July 22, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Coca-Cola may be a business giant, but this Goliath is no match for a mom and her mouse! It all began innocently enough with a clever social media marketing plan to promote Dr. Pepper on Facebook. The program was designed to override the Facebook status box of an opted in user with fun but embarrassing quotes chosen at random.

“What’s wrong with peeing in the shower?” probably cracked up the football buddies when they saw it on Frankie’s Facebook page, but the mom of a 14-year-old girl wasn’t at all amused with what she found on her daughter’s account. The reference that started the ruckus was an homage to a particularly disgusting porno movie. A reference that has no business being tied to Facebook or Dr. Pepper, let alone the account of a child.

MrsRickman (the woman’s online user name) complained to Coca Cola and was offered theater tickets and a hotel stay as an apology. The woman was offended by the offer and took her complaint to a UK mom’s website. 1300 replies later and a wave of discussion in the media and now it looks like the marketing agency is going to take the fall. But who is really to blame?

Here’s Coca-Cola’s stance as reported by New Media Age:

“We were unaware of the meaning of this line when the promotion was approved and have launched an investigation into why it was included. We take full responsibility and will be reviewing our promotional procedures.”

Full responsibility, meaning . . .

“We have stopped all our ongoing work with Lean Mean Fighting Machine and are reviewing our relationship with the agency. We will take all steps necessary to ensure this does not happen again.”

Coca-Cola’s claim that they didn’t know the remark was pornographic simply doesn’t hold up. Even if the person who reviewed the promotion wasn’t familiar with the exact reference, the line was clearly dirty and they should have asked for clarification. But even looking beyond that particular reference, who thought it was a good idea to subject Facebook users of any age to random vulgarity? Is this really how they want to define the brand? Peeing in the shower, porn and Dr. Pepper? I’m sure they thought it was funny and hip when it was first conceived and even a little controversial and dangerous but this isn’t beer, we’re talking about, it’s a soda from a company whose slogan used to be “Sign of Good Taste.”

The lesson here is that companies need to be actively involved in protecting their reputation and their brand. This applies to the corporate giants and the small company just starting out. When it comes to social media marketing, remember that “sharing” is what it’s all about which means that the R-rated photo you offer to an adult on Twitter could end up on the Facebook of a minor with just a few clicks.

Now, I’ll leave you with a quote from the terms of service on the Dr. Pepper Facebook Fan Page:

“We encourage you to post comments, photos, videos, and links here. But please behave. We may monitor and remove inappropriate, offensive or any other postings.”

Unless, of course, they post the offensive material themselves.

What do you think? Did the mother in question make too much out of an innocent ad campaign? Or is Coca-Cola out of line?

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Coca-Cola Gets Slammed For Vulgar Facebook Campaign

Facebook Setting Up A DC Dog and Pony Show About Privacy

Written on May 26, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Facebook is certainly knee deep in the whole privacy thing now and the evidence can be seen in what they are busy trying to accomplish in Washington, DC. Of course, the best way to manage this kind of delicate issue is to do things in a way that does not draw attention to yourself from the nation’s capitol but that shipped sailed long ago for Facebook.

As a result they are busy trying to show the folks in DC who can make live rather miserable for them that they are not all that bad as a company. Even though the founder and CEO went and wrote a ‘letter’ in the Washington Post apologizing for their actions this is starting to look worse and worse for Facebook. Honestly, it’s simply their own fault so I guess they will get what they paid for.

Mashable reports

Most Facebook users have no idea that the social network giant has a D.C. office full of lobbyists and policy wonks. But that office will be staging a Congress staffers-only briefing this week to address issues of — you guessed it — user privacy.

Like any major corporation that plays footsie with public and private data, large amounts of money, mergers and acquisitions, and other hallmarks of big business, Facebook must stay abreast of policy changes and try to influence legislators in its favor.

To help with the launch of its “new suite of simpler and easier-to-use privacy tools,” Facebook is inviting House and Senate staff to the Capitol Visitors Center to “learn about what these tools mean for your constituents and the future of sharing online.” The briefing will take place on Thursday, May 27 at 4 p.m. ET and will include a Q&A.

This is not exactly coming from a position of power since it is obvious that Facebook is going into ‘save’ mode and trying to calm the storm that they have allowed to spin out of control. It is awful nice of the folks at Facebook to include a live Q & A for the DC crowd and not do it through a newspaper like they did for the people who are most impacted by their actions.

I know there are plenty of social media industry people in high places that want to protect their relationship with a rich guy like Mark Zuckerberg but since I am not one of them I can speak freely.

Here’s my take. Facebook is run by an arrogant group of people that don’t really care much about the privacy or anything of their users. They want and need to make money from this huge user base they have amassed and they figure that the very group they depend upon is just a herd of dumb sheep that will do whatever their shepherd (that being Facebook) tells them and they won’t complain. From a business standpoint Facebook’s underestimation of its users’ ability to think for itself has exposed what the company was founded on: we need to get ours no matter what the cost to others.

That’s not much different than many other companies, really, but most of those companies have not built a huge user base on a lie and then turned their back on it and then act as if they should ‘just play along’.

As far as I can tell, the people who may be the most ignorant are those running Facebook. Otherwise, how do you explain the ‘palms up with a shrug of the shoulders’ approach to being what amounts to playing social media’s three card monty game with their users’ privacy?

I may be out of line or over the top but this is my opinion and I am sticking with it. What’s your take?

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Facebook Setting Up A DC Dog and Pony Show About Privacy

Facebook Makes a Deal with App Maker Zynga

Written on May 18, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Zynga has made some of the most popular apps on Facebook, such as FarmVille with its 75M users. With a total of 239 million monthly active users of their apps, Zynga has a significant proportion of Facebook users hooked. But they just about got unhooked: Zynga and Facebook were in a tense face-off over Facebook’s currency and the site’s cut.

Facebook is moving wholly to the Facebook Credits system, with the network taking a 30% of transactions with apps. A new agreement, announced today, has averted the war. The two companies have finally realized that they are interdependent, though I daresay Zynga needs FB a bit more than FB needs Zynga.

Both Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, issued statements saying how the companies look forward to working together on behalf of users. The deal shows that both companies realize that to go to war against the other would be a case of mutually assured destruction. Both are dependent on each other, in a classic scenario of a platform owner and a major application maker.

(“Classic”?)

Zynga needs Facebook to sustain its apps. Zynga’s apps keep Facebook users coming back—though they’re just one of many things people sign onto the network for. The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but with Facebook on the high ground, I assume they are still taking a significant cut of the Facebook Credit transactions within the apps.

Zynga had already FarmVille.com, which links back to the Facebook app for its most popular game on the social network. However, it also had plans to launch Zynga Live, which could’ve been an independent gaming site—which suggests that the relationship between Zynga and FB was already strained. The agreement, however, has cemented their relationship for the next five years.

What do you think? Who do you think will come out on top from the deal?

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Facebook Makes a Deal with App Maker Zynga

Does Quality Score Impact B2B Search Advertising Success?

Written on April 7, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, Object, book

The premise that ad popularity and a high quality score leads to improved search advertising results may or may not be true…. especially for B2B advertisers. I urge business marketers to challenge this assumption and understand the relationship between PPC quality score and ROI-based results.



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Can Snail Mail Be Part of Social Media?

Written on January 12, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

The online space is certainly trying hard to cut the apron strings associated with traditional media techniques and practices. It can be hard though, to completely separate from something that may still have value. Think about how nice it was (or still is) to go back “home” and get that meal that you just can’t make on your own. While you never want to be back there 24 / 7 again there are certain things that are part of our past that will always have great value and we get to take the best of those things with us.

The same concept may apply to the Internet marketing world as well. As much as we try to break away and create our own identity separate from the traditional world of content generation, advertising, PR and every other piece of the overall marketing mosaic, there may be some things that will always have a place. One of them might even be snail mail.

An article in the Wall Street Journal talks about how there may be certain aspects of snail mail that carry importance even in the rush to digitize everything in our business lives. While not right for every business, part of the relationship building that we talk of as the most important aspect of the social web can be cemented with a good old fashioned handwritten note. For instance:

Looking to cut costs amid the recession, Alicia Settle initially thought it would be a good idea to eliminate her company’s annual direct mailing.

Spending about $20,000 on the personally signed letters, which offered customers a discount on early orders, seemed indulgent for Per Annum Inc., which sells city diaries, albums, and planners in the struggling corporate gift market. But after swapping snail mail for email last year, Ms. Settle saw a 25% drop in early orders compared with the same period the previous year.

“We realized we had made a huge mistake,” says Ms. Settle, president of the New York firm.

This is one of the dangers of taking established businesses and preaching that since online is the wave of the future that you need to go there. Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead into the future! Sure businesses do need to evolve but to what extent is completely dependent on what kind of business it is, what their existing customers are used to and how new customers can be attracted to the offerings.

As a result, you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater so there may be room to get rid of some traditional marketing that is certainly unproductive in the new world order while keeping others. These “old school” activities like handwritten thank you notes and other techniques now are part of the whole social marketing fabric that can serve to benefit the new and the old customers. They are actually part of social media.

The idea is to send something that’s more appealing than “junk” mail and potentially more noticeable than an email message, says Eric Anderson, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. That allows business owners “to offer a personal touch the larger firms may not be able to have,” he says.

Prof. Anderson says other business owners are trying to figure out how to integrate Web marketing—such as email campaigns, banner ads and social-networking sites—with direct mail. “The introduction of new media has forced [business owners] to go back and revisit the whole playbook on what’s the best way to communicate with customers,” Mr. Anderson says.

Ms. Settle, for instance, plans to use e-marketing to complement the hand-signed direct-mail piece, not replace it.

So how do you incorporate the best of the old and the new in your business? Have you made a “pendulum swing” adjustment and taken away too much of what was once effective? Did you then find that part of the old way of doing things could still serve you well? Where is the happy medium and what might it look like moving forward?

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Can Snail Mail Be Part of Social Media?

Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?

Written on January 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?”

That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities.

They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….).

Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice:

If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what.

Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end?

I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it.

What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t ?

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Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?

Cup of Joe: The Secret to Getting Rich on the Internet, is in Las Vegas – Part 2

Written on November 14, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

This is part two of Secret to Getting Rich on the Internet, series. If you haven’t read part one, you probably should do that first.

So if you are reading this you probably read last week’s post, where I promised that I would reveal a secret tactic that can make you rich on the internet. Before i do that, I want to talk about secrets in general for a moment. Quite honestly, most “secrets”on the internet are BS. This is because oftentimes they are bits of knowledge and advice that seem obvious to many, but practiced by few. This is generally because the best tactics are the ones that don’t show their true value until you have years of experience trying them out. Many of the most valuable “secret” tactics (including the one below) are things that many of us do everyday but are not aware of it.

And the secret is…

Building strong relationships with the people that matter most. Building strong relationships has historically been the cornerstone of success. Sometimes the internet and social media fools us into thinking that we can do anything we want without anyone’s help. If you think that, you are dead wrong. No one lives on an island–we all work and play in the same cyberspace. Building strong relationships can be a powerful tactic in advancing your personal and professional life because it enables other people to feel empowered when you succeed.

The only downside to this tactic is, to do it effectively, you have to focus on the people that matter most. People that matter most?? Don’t all people matter? Unfortunately if you are going to use relationship building as a tactic you have to segment people effectively in order to get the most out of your effort. In short, you can’t be friends with everyone!

So who matters and who doesn’t? For each person this may be different, but I like to break people down into two groups.

People that are excited about what you are doing should be your first target for building relationships. When people are excited about something they generally tend to talk about it early on, and then as their interest passes they find something else. If you can effectively build a solid relationship with that person then you will be at the forefront of their thoughts as long as you keep the relationship alive. They will then turn into your strongest brand advocates because they want to see you succeed.

People that you want to be excited about what you are doing should be your second target. These are the folks that are maybe influential in your industry. They are the ones that can help spread your vision into other networks that you aren’t a part of yet. Or they might just be the person that you know would truly benefit in what you are doing.

So now we know which types of folks to target, the real question is how do we actually build these strong relationships? Well, I think that’s a topic for another post, but one way to start learning how to develop strong relationships is to follow a few folks, that I saw in Vegas, that are amazing relationship builders.

Relationship Building Gurus:

• Dana Lookadoo
• Joanna Lord
• Jon Henshaw
• Dave Snyder

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Cup of Joe: The Secret to Getting Rich on the Internet, is in Las Vegas – Part 2