Alert Blog Reviews

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?

While most of us in the Internet marketing “industry” were all aghast at the Facebook privacy problem of ’09 , the rest of the world could have cared less. You know those people, right? The ones who don’t live and breathe this stuff to the point that all perspective is lost? These are the ‘everyday’ Facebook users who don’t give a rip about Mark Zuckerberg and the continued search for 7,000 people who care enough to impact any policy changes with the social media giant. So those regular folks pushed Facebook to a point where it had never been before: the number one site during the Christmas holiday. ReadWriteWeb tells us Christmas is a holiday that brings people together, so perhaps it should be no surprise that Facebook has become a part of millions of peoples’ Christmas experiences. For the first time in its history, Facebook was the #1 most visited website in the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, according to traffic analyst firm Hitwise today. Makes sense doesn’t it? Personally I was more prone to using Skype rather than updating everyone but that is certainly a personal preference. So while the site finished third for the year behind Google and Yahoo Mail it was certainly a milestone to be seen as the Christmas site of choice. Last year Facebook finished second in this contest to Google but was able to flip positions this year. See what a year of gigantic growth can do for you? Wonder if Santa will be as nice to Facebook next year after the rest of the world catches on that their “goings on” at Facebook aren’t as private as they used to be?

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Facebook Receives News of A Merry Christmas Indeed

I trust you had a great Christmas! As our minds dream of how fantastic 2010 will be, it’s time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. Here are Marketing Pilgrim’s top ten most read posts in 2009. Bing.com; Is it Worth Switching from Google? – A home run for Microsoft? While Bing certainly deserves credit for being the first serious challenger to Google, it didn’t hurt that 2009 was the year that Microsoft stepped-up its media outreach to us. Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools – This post was written in 2007 and has been in our top five for the past 3 years! Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide – A great guest article by Jon Rognerud and it still stands-up as a great primer for social media marketing. 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – A smart blogger knows not to simply update a popular post. Instead, you think of ways to expand on it–with a new post! This post from December 2008, added 8 more great monitoring tools for reputation monitoring. 200+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter – Back before there Twitter Lists were just a twinkle in the eye of Twitter’s founders, Brian Chappell authored the definitive list of marketers on Twitter. If we hadn’t introduced a policy to close comments on older posts, I believe this one would have easily broken 1,000 comments by now! 21 of the Best WordPress Plugins for New Blogs – Just a little over a year ago, I spilled the beans on the plugins that power Marketing Pilgrim. Look for a new, updated list, in the New Year! Google Offers Cheap Online File Storage With a Catch – How in the world did this benign looking post from 2007 make it into our top ten list of 2009? Good keywords! The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing – My good friend Ben Wills authored this post in 2006–which at the time was groundbreaking. In fact, I blatantly–with his permission–used it to frame an entire chapter of Radically Transparent! Google Reputation Management: Fix Your Google Reputation & Remove Negative Results – Do you get the feeling that we have a good grasp of reputation management issues? This post is over 2 years old, but, aside from the Google Pages reference, is still remarkably relevant. Facebook Really Does Make Mone y – When it comes to Facebook, I tend to defer to Jordan’s critical eye. She never fails to deliver! Some observations: As of today, Marketing Pilgrim consists of 6,792 (make that 6,793 with this one) posts and more than 45,000 comments! That’s a lot of words! Traffic was up 17.54% in 2009 compared to 2008. Not a bad growth rate! Referrals from Twitter were up 120%!!! Referrals from Yahoo were down 13%. Our own URL shortener– Gri.ms –let us track the origination of around 10,000 visitors! We know where you live! Want to see previous years’ top posts? Check out 2006 , 2007 and 2008 .

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The 10 Most Popular Marketing Pilgrim Posts of 2009

As the great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” and the deal between Yelp and Google is the latest proof of that. In the Internet space in particular an extra dose of caution is recommended when hearing a ‘rumor’ (i.e. something that comes on ‘good authority’ and is almost a done deal) to take a step back and give the rumor a chance to breathe. Unlike a bottle of fine wine, though, rumors in this space often go south but that’s just part of the space. The latest ‘event’ that received the treatment of a lot of attention but didn’t finish as rumored was the ‘deal’ between Google and Yelp. Last week we told you of TechCrunch’s report on the imminent Google deal to purchase Yelp. Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. And while the deal isn’t done, we’ve heard that it’s very likely to close. The price is supposedly at least $500 million. Well, TechCrunch reports that this deal has derailed and that Yelp is walking away from a significant offer. The deal was, as we wrote late last week, in the later stages of negotiation. The two companies had agreed on a price – around $550 million plus earnouts – and were working through the final details of the acquisition. Then something happened that made Yelp reconsider the deal. Over the weekend they notified Google that they were not going to sell, say multiple sources. That something must have been pretty big and pretty sudden. These negotiations take a considerable amount of time to get to the point where an anonymous source gets the itch to leak the ‘truth’ to the Internet media press. This information was leaked but apparently there were a few landmines that were not seen or not considered ‘deal breakers’. One can speculate all day long as to why this deal fell apart but we are not going down that road. In fact, until something is officially noted by either company (which may or may not happen) we’ll sit on the sidelines for now. So with everything in life and, in particular the Internet marketing industry, step on the rumor mill with your grain of salt handy. As for now let us know if this is good news that the deal fell through or were you thinking there was some good to come out of the acquisition.

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Google and Yelp a “No Go”

AOL continues to travel into the brave new world that it is venturing into as the lines have been cut that once attached it to TimeWarner. Of course, there will be a lot of scrutiny which often leads to criticisms but that’s just part of doing business. Another part of doing business as a solo act is to make sure that you lean more toward ‘lean and mean’ which may mean trying to shed some business units that are not going to be helping AOL address its core competencies (which is another matter seeking clarity so feel free to chime in if you are from AOL). TechCrunch is reporting that ICQ, which was purchased by AOL back in the Roaring 90’s (I am not even sure that term makes any sense but I am sticking with it) is getting attention from Google and DST (Digital Sky Technologies) whose biggest splash in ’09 was giving more money to Facebook . ICQ, which AOL acquired in 1998 for $400 million, has 33 million worldwide monthly users, according to Comscore. But 8.3 million of those are in Russia, where it hold the no. 1 spot for instant messaging. That explains DST’s interest. It also explains some of Google’s interest as they struggle to get a proper foothold in that market. We concentrate heavily on the Internet marketing world for the English speaking world but the growth for companies like Google etc are in the large international audiences. Consider that Google has introduced 38 new search products over the last 70 days and language translation is heavily featured. Of course there would be significant interest in acquiring a ‘ready made’ audience in Russia. Is DST thinking the same way for Facebook? Why not, especially when the rumored price for ICQ and its users was somewhere north of $250 million but not likely anywhere near its price of 11 years ago. It could be a true bargain. . As with many business activities timing is an important part of the measure of success or failure. Since AOL is in a position to move ICQ and please its shareholders the timing may be right for a little showdown at the Siberian Corral between DST and Google. Interesting: yes or nyet?

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From Russia, With Chat?

There are few email newsletters that I can recommend marketers subscribe to–we live in an RSS world these days–but Dr. Ralph Wilson’s Web Marketing Today is on the list! If you’re not familiar with Dr. Wilson, then I suspect you’ve entered your marketing career in just past the few years– Dr. Wilson is the grandfather of internet marketing advice. Hopefully, he’ll take that as a compliment Anyway, when Dr. Wilson asked me to jump on a video interview with him at SES Chicago, I made time for him in my busy schedule. The result? The video below will take less than 7 minutes of your time and hopefully give you a few tips for your own online reputation management efforts .

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Talking Online Reputation Management with Dr. Ralph Wilson

Often we forget the little guy, the SMB, in our discussions of the comings and goings of the Internet marketing industry. Sure there are times like this when a report surfaces talking about their issues and concerns but, for the most part, we like to talk about big brands and how they do the Internet marketing thing well or not so well. Of course, when you consider that 95% of the businesses in the US are considered an SMB of some shape or size it should make one think a little more about the impact this market segment has in the overall scheme of things. Unfortunately, ‘too big to fail’ bailouts don’t await the little guy. Instead the SMB needs to make due with what they have and be as smart about how they spend their marketing dollars as possible. The Center for Media Research has released a study by Vertical Response that shows just where many of these ‘Main Street’ players are going with their online dollars. The big winners: e-mail and social media. With only 3.8% of small business folks NOT planning on using e-mail marketing and with social media carrying the perception of being free (which they so rudely discover it is far from free) this should make some in the banner and search crowd a little wary. I suppose the question is just what does increased use of social media mean? Will there be money put toward it or will it just be that the effort by the SMB social media practitioner (usually also referred to as the business owner) is increased. We’ll see. This quote from helps to frame something that most know already but have had a hard time changing. Janine Popick, VerticalResponse CEO and founder, says “… small businesses continue to allocate portions of their budget to… email and social media, despite the downturn in the economic climate… (but) marketers (still) need to help small businesses to see the value of integrating search engine marketing… into their campaigns.” Honestly, I am a little confused by some of the findings here because in the next breath we see the following: According to the study, the most important tool for small businesses to succeed in 2010 is search engine marketing, while email marketing, public relations and social media cited as crucial for success. 23.8% of all small businesses reported that search engine marketing was the tool most needed for their business to succeed in 2010. So which is it? Do they or don’t they use or want to use search marketing? Or is the better question can they or can’t they? Maybe the way that these findings seem a bit muddy is just a reflection of the struggles that many businesses have with the shift from traditional marketing to the online space. In 2010 it looks like the rubber is really hitting the road as the Internet marketing industry matures while many may end up just being left behind. Your thoughts?

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Small Business Marketing Efforts Point to E-Mail and Social Media in 2010