Alert Blog Reviews

Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits. How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly to the group that most needs or wants my products? Well, it’s simple supply and demand. While you are targeting a much more defined market you are not going to be alone in that quest to advertiser to just the people that will buy. Remember those pesky competitors? They want those people too because their claim is that they are better than you. Now you are going to find a price war that drives up costs for advertising and makes customer acquisition costs rise which in turn hurt the bottom line. So maybe there is too much of a good thing after all. MediaPost tells about a study performed by the MIT School of Management that has looked at this in detail Professor Alessandro Bonatti, working with Yale University economics professor Dirk Bergemann on this research, says “… newspapers have a very limited ability to target audiences… specialized magazines can do better… Google has a very good ability to target who’s browsing each page… (though) online advertising has the potential to drive out traditional advertising, it does not necessarily follow that online advertisers will make more money… ” Bonatti continues, “…as technology keeps improving, more and more web sites can sell very narrow products to very specialized audiences… with lots of people targeting the same audience the profits to be made through specialized advertising become more and more spread out… instead of competing for one large pool… you will have price war in each targeted segment as the slice gets more and more narrow.” Bonatti concludes that, “… the better the technology, the lower the profits for advertisers… “ Not the news that advertisers want to hear but it sure is music to the ears of the niche ad networks that attract these more narrowly defined groups. Advertising price war? We’re in! Woo-hoo! Different verticals are responding more rapidly and it also is dependent on just how far CPM’s fell during this downturn / recession / economic morass. Real estate is seeing an increase in CPM’s jumping 17% from Q2 to Q3 of last year while foodies are driving that category up almost 91% in the same period. Here is a chart from Adify Vertical Gauge for you to gloss over and wonder what it really means. So be careful what you wish for advertisers. Sure it’s great to advertise as close to the buyer as you can but you’re not the only one with that strategy. Let’s hope you are the one with the deeper pockets at least.

See the article here:
For Ads the More Targeted May Mean Less Profitable

If you’ve always dreamed of being published, but just didn’t have the time to finish a novel/novella/short story, Twitter may be your big chance at fame, fortune, and a spot on Oprah. Okay, okay, only fame. And only a little. For writers who like a challenge, there are a number of Twitter-based ezines that publish short (and I do mean short) stories. Some call them “Twisters,” others micro- or nano-fiction, and others simply “one heck of a challenge.” You’ve only got 140 characters to tell a complete story that leaves your readers nodding their heads with a sense of fulfillment. If this sounds like your cup of java, there are several venues where you can submit your tales for consideration. Some even pay big bucks (up to $1.50), so what are you waiting for? Twitter-fiction markets: Thaumatrope – @Thaumatrope If you can write a science fiction, fantasy, or horror story that fits in a Twitter box, send your submissions to these folks. Pays $1.20. Tweet the Meat – @TweetTheMeat This publisher of horror/weird/speculative fiction wants “fear in 140 characters or less.” Thanks to their weekly themes, there’s plenty to inspire you. Pays $1. Nanoism – @Nanoism Submit your thoughtful, literary nano-fiction to these folks. They’ll accept all genres but particularly want “stories that move us with their writing, stories that stay with us longer than the few seconds it takes to read them.” Pays $1 for one-tweet stories and up to $5 for serials. @Microcosms This publisher’s first “issue” isn’t scheduled to appear until April, but you can send in your submissions of science fiction, fantasy, and horror now. Pays $1. Know of other markets for Twitter stories? Share them in the comments! © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Flex Your Literary Fast-Twitch Muscles Writing Twitter-Sized Stories

The rest is here:
Flex Your Literary Fast-Twitch Muscles Writing Twitter-Sized Stories

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 ?

View post:
Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?

As expected it looks like this week may be a bit light in the news department. That’s fine. Everyone needs a break from time to time. So as I am looking around this morning I come across an op-ed piece in the New York Times that is written by Adam Raff, a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology company. From what I can gather, Mr. Raff is upset that his site was banned from Google’s index. There is no explanation as to why this happened so I am not going to assume anything although an article from eConsultancy looks at his plight and we get some insight as to why Google is so ‘mean’ to him. As a result, Mr. Raff contends that Google simply is too powerful and that the government should be considering a ‘search neutrality’ platform that falls in line with the ‘net neutrality’ platform. Here is a bit of his concern: Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance. I had to shake my head that this was actually put in print but I kept reading. I bumped into more ‘complaints’. Another way that Google exploits its control is through preferential placement. With the introduction in 2007 of what it calls “universal search,” Google began promoting its own services at or near the top of its search results, bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others. Google now favors its own price-comparison results for product queries, its own map results for geographic queries, its own news results for topical queries, and its own YouTube results for video queries. And Google’s stated plans for universal search make it clear that this is only the beginning. I guess my question is “What is a company supposed to do in that situation”? Why should anyone in the free market be obligated to being relegated to a ‘public service’ status just because they do something better than most? I admit that it seems a bit creepy at times to see just how far reaching Google is with regard to services. I also believe that as they get bigger there are likely to be many vulnerabilities that will be discovered and exploited as the free market has seen in the past with seemingly invincible powers like IBM and Microsoft. It just happens. There’s a lot more to this op-whine piece that I am surprised the Times even allowed to see the light of day. Without search neutrality rules to constrain Google’s competitive advantage, we may be heading toward a bleakly uniform world of Google Everything — Google Travel, Google Finance, Google Insurance, Google Real Estate, Google Telecoms and, of course, Google Books. Some will argue that Google is itself so innovative that we needn’t worry. But the company isn’t as innovative as it is regularly given credit for. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Android and many other Google products are all based on technology that Google has acquired rather than invented. Ask Cisco if they ‘invented’ everything they own. The folks who make Flip cameras are thrilled that Cisco likes to buy good ideas. Interestingly enough, Mr. Raff actually shows that Google PROVIDES market opportunity for the little guy. There are small companies out there that make good things that Google could buy thus making the companies that were innovative enough to be recognized successful beyond what was likely to happen on their own. Maybe Mr. Raff needs to think about making something worthy of being purchased by Google rather than worming his way into the media to complain about his issues. I do have a solution for Mr. Raff. If there is this need for an impartial search engine (which is a ridiculous concept because in order for anything to be ‘ranked’ in numerical order there needs to be some guidelines thus implied ‘partiality’) that is based solely on merit (Whose definition of merit? Someone has to be judge and jury here, right?) and relevance (as defined by whom?) why not let the government build its own search engine? Why put this constraint on the private sector? Our current situation here in the US is that the government wants to be knee deep in everything so why not let them create the engine ‘for the people and by the people’ then let the people decide? Are there any Googlers out there who would like to address this kind of thinking? As for Marketing Pilgrim readers how do you really feel about Google’s place in the market? Is there any validity to this argument? Is Google’s dominance something to be concerned about or just accepted? Is there a real threat of this becoming a Google world? What if that did happen? Is there any validity to the concept of ’search neutrality’? Weigh in please. I have a better idea. Would someone please make some news so we can move on to other things?

See more here:
Search Neutrality?

When I first started using Twitter earlier in the year, I didn’t really understand #hashtags. As a result, I didn’t utilize them. However, I’ve now started using at least one hashtag in all my tweets and my Twitter experience has improved drastically as a result. Hashtags as Keywords One simple way of thinking of hashtags is as keyword tags that help label your tweets. If you use a blogging platform like WordPress or social media sites like Flickr , you’re probably already familiar with the idea of using keywords to help tag your blog posts or photos. Keyword tags allow people to more easily find related content of interest. This is EXACTLY why you want to use hashtags — more people are likely to find your Twitter account as a result. How Hashtags Help People Find You on Twitter There at least a couple ways that hashtags help people find you on Twitter. The most basic is that in the Twitter interface, hashtags are hyperlinks. When people click a hashtag that interests them, say #twitter, they receive real-time search results of other tweets that have utilized that hashtag. Hashtags are also accessible via various Twitter APIs — there are a plethora of web apps that utilize the Twitter API like foller.me and the Twitter data visualization tool Mentionmap . Hashtags Will Improve Your Twitter Experience Utilizing hashtags not only allows other people to find you on Twitter, but also allows you to find other Twitter users who you many benefit from following. Given that many developers love playing around with the Twitter API, by using hashtags you’re also providing them with raw material to help build the next super-cool Twitter API-based app. These apps also provide yet another avenue for people to find you on Twitter. Twitip has many other neat articles on hashtags that are worth reading. For new Twitter users who may still be a little puzzled by hashtags, my hope is that re-conceptualizing them as keyword tags will help you benefit more from the one of the most interesting and useful social media tools available on the Web today. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why You Should Consider Using Hashtags

See the article here:
Why You Should Consider Using Hashtags

If you do not have some sort of disability like impaired sight or hearing the idea of web accessibility is something that you likely don’t consider. I didn’t. I don’t think that makes any of us bad people but considering the time of year it may give us some pause to count our blessings. Apparently, the one group that needs to be thinking about the issue more than most are web designers and developers. If the article from cnet is any indication it appears that that these folks are thinking about more on the front-end rather than being reminded and having to retro-fit sites later. The cnet article draws attention to Yahoo’s efforts in this arena in particular . Yahoo’s Victor Tsaran knows how much time Web designers spend agonizing over color and font-width choices when laying out an application. So when he started Yahoo’s accessibility push two years ago, he had a tough time arousing sympathy for engineers grousing about how much extra time was needed to create accessibility features. Fortunately for Tsaran, Yahoo’s accessibility manager, he’s running into that problem less and less. Web designers are starting to take accessibility as seriously as button placement or heading layout when they develop their products, improving the Web experience not only for people like Tsaran–who lost his sight at the age of five–but for Web users in general. While not quite yet ubiquitous the idea of web accessibility is important and will continue to be so moving forward. More large companies are acting on their increased awareness according to the folks at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). YouTube has added captioning to its capabilities in response to the need. Honestly, until I read this article I was not aware how great that need actually is. There are about 60 million people in the U.S. who can’t use a computer to get on the Internet in the normal fashion, said Yahoo’s Alan Brightman, senior policy director of special communities. For those people, a mix of screen reader software, keyboards with special buttons, and even motion-sensing Web cameras must take the place of the mouse and QWERTY keyboard. That can cause problems for Web designers who rely too heavily on mouse navigation, or who design pages with special multimedia whiz-bang effects that look cool only to the people that can see them. “There can be an assumption of homogeneity on the Web,” said Naomi Bilodeau, technical program manager for Google. Users of screen readers–software that essentially reads out loud a description of text, links, and buttons on a page–are confounded the most by Captchas and Flash Web pages, according to a recent survey of screen-reader users conducted by WebAIM. 60 million people? That is 1 in 5 Americans cannot experience the web without the assistance of some form of accessibility enhancement. I had no idea. The chart below gives a general idea about how people see the progress being made. So as the web roars forward with HTML5 standards being debated and more and more advances there is a reason beside just fairness that should make businesses stand up and take notice of web accessibility concerns: money. It is estimated that there is $220 billion in discretionary spending available to disabled people. So where are you with accessibility issues for your site? Have you given them consideration? Now many may find this next question as a way to rile up some folks. If that’s the case then so be it. Consider this: In the current day and age of more and more aggressive government regulation would you be prepared both operationally and financially to make the changes to your website that could be a mandate? It’s already a requirement to do work with the government. And in order to do business with the U.S. government, companies must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which insists that electronic and information technology products sold to government agencies be designed with disabled employees in mind, and that government services produced by contractors consider disabled citizens in equal measure. Are you ready?

The rest is here:
Web Accessibility Moving More Toward the Norm

As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier. In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here. 1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts. This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up user lists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up. A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’. Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep: – Is the person I’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth. – Is the person I’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff I’m already getting from other sources? – Does the person I’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there? I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally. Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma , so I’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically. When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you. Next comes the evil part! The purge . . . Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page. All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them. 2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me. Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with. This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘colleagues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty. Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way. 3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option. Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people i follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool. Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!). The value is back! Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why It Pays To Purge – When and How to Unfollow

Read this article:
Why It Pays To Purge – When and How to Unfollow