EyeWonder has super takeover ads – annoying or innovative?

Clickable published the Clickable Guru Guide to Search Marketing*

A great writeup on the RFP process agencies go through – and how painful it can be.

Google announces Google Chrome OS – competition is a good thing, especially in the OS wars

Great images from around the web in 2008

What did I miss this week? Let me know in the comments or contact me.

*Clickable is a portfolio company of my employerUSV

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

Some call it slightly more hearty than a handshake and even built a site dedicated to the FriendDA while others say its a mutual exchange and nothing written is needed.

(Image courtesy of ShutterStock.com)

I believe The Idea will only improve as a result of having solicited your honest and clear feedback.

I have entered into a few of these agreements recently, and feel confident sharing my own ideas back with these people.

I think reputation plays a big role in these type of agreements. If you violate someones trust that story or reputation will follow you to the next person or project.

Having a FriendDA allows you to bounce ideas off of someone you trust, and share things that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day. Sometimes it is great to vet things with someone else, or feel confident in providing solid feedback without having to worry about what that person is doing with the information.

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• The FriendDA, the NDA for friends – “Just don’t be a douche” (thenextweb.com)

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

The final question was the catalyst for this post which I wanted to explore further.

10. What is the best way to increase website traffic?
Treat your blog like an island. It needs supplies, traffic ports, trade routes, and visitors to remain habitable. Ignore one or more of these metaphors and your blog can become a deserted and desolate island fast – pay attention to each and you will have a favorite destination of visitors who want to come back.

Treasure Island by Aaron Escobar

Treat your blog like an island
Your blog is out there in the ocean of other islands and can be washed away and forgotten, or turn into a thriving place to visit. By treated your web property like a real property you can gain long lasting value and not get discouraged when things are not going your way (read: no traffic)

Supplies
Without the right supplies your blog will die.

Get a good commenting system in place early – I recommend Disqus
Get a good platform or infrastructure – I recommend Wordpress

Traffic Ports
Building a good foundation means traffic can come to and from your blog in the easiest way possible. To help this process along I recommend a solid SEO plugin for Wordpress. This also means getting ready for visitors and clearly explaining your purpose and who is writing. Providing clear and concise information can provider users with a much better experience.

Trade Routes
Provide a way to contact you! This is constantly forgotten and it is too easy to overlook this step. With a simple for from Wufooor even a WP plugin you can have a contact form up in minutes.

You also need to get out there and participate in conversations that interest you and pertain to your blog. Notice I did not say “go comment all over the place” but rather comment where you feel you have further questions about a post or can add to the dialogue. This builds a solid “trade route” between your blog and others as your name and URL should always point back to your island.

Establish links to your inspirational sources. These will usually be one way links, but in time the favor will be returned. As an established source of quality information your island will too become a place people WANT to link to.

Visitors

Getting ready for visitors is important – especially in an age where too many visitors can sink your entire island and new people have nowhere to go. This metaphor can be explained by checking out the Digg effect or knowing that a lot of visitors can make a blog slow down. To avoid this use a simple cache plugin for Wordpress.

You also need a clear and concise path for visitors to follow. Checkout one of your posts and see how it feels to navigate to each of your pages. Confused? So are your visitors. Give options, provide other links deeper into your site, and give opportunities to find more information.

I think this island metaphor is just about used up – but I hope it provides some insight into what is needed to create a successful blog. I learned some of these lessons the hard way so hopefully sharing them with you will save you the trouble.

Have other ideas? Let me know in the comments and prove that this blog is not a desolate island alone in the blogosphere!

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• Interview with Top 100 Blogger – Daniel Scocco (problogger.net)

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

To take a contrarian view I want to point out the importance of thinking things through. One tip I used when doing strategy sessions is to think about the sustainability of a decision moving forward. Creating real time value is great, but the long term sustainability of that decision can come back to haunt you.

I believe it make sense to slow things down at the planning stage and map out exactly how and why something will work once it is out in the real world. There is a powerful metaphor for developing something that is available to everyone right this second, but there is a strategy that must go along with it.

You cannot simply launch something and hope for the best, but rather have a strategy around it and way to support it. Too many times I have seen the mistake made with certain types of social media. My goto example is Facebook pages – everyone things they need one, but nobody stops to ask why.

Facebook now has 200+ million members and you have a global reach. But when it comes to targeting your audience and getting people to participate, you may be better off on a smaller niche network that has members that understand your brand or needs.

Having a strategy of soon enables you to create a roadmap of ideas that compete with the need for realtime information – but makes sure you do not pursue things that are unsustainable in the long run.

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

Are you a founder? Great writeup of what it takes to be a founder and see if you fit the bill.

TubeChop Great way to microchunk youTube videos

Ad supported Internet report from the IAB

Blind Search Blind search between Yahoo, Google, and Bing without knowing the results publisher – very cool

Google Page Speed Google introduces Page Speed and a great tool for webmasters

Deliver something of value every week – Very straightforward

10 Ways to launch a blog

Ignore Sunk Costs – from Seth Godin

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

This blog continues to be an experiment in learning about Marketing and Technology. Since its inception I have tried out new features, ideas, and mediums to interact with and build a community.

Today I am happy to announce my latest experiment showing off a re-marketing technology by MediaMath. I got the chance to meet CEO Joe Zawadzki last year and came away impressed with the next generation agency platform business he has built. Recently I got the opportunity to show off exactly how their technology works by running a 120×600 banner here on Marketing.fm. You can learn about the MediaMath Technology on the site.

The goal of this experiment is to show off exactly how MediaMath remarketing works to current and future clients, and hopefully get some engaged interactive media folks involved in the conversation here.

In the interest of full disclosure it should be made clear that I will not be making any money from this project, or will I be paying anything for it. It really is just a great way for Joe and his team to show off what they have built on a live site, and put my own blog in front of a new audience.

To see the technology in action you may need a demo from their team.

The gist of it is that once you come to an advertisers website and navigate away, you may come across ads for the original pages product or services on MediaMath’s affiliated publishers sites. This gives the advertiser the power to remarket to a user that has some interest in their brand, shown by visiting their site.

Overall I think this is a good thing for people looking to get relevant messages in front of them, and good for advertisers looking to get the best ROI.

In a complex world of ad networks, increasing accountability, and the need to optimize campaigns MediaMath is trying to make sense of it all.

For more information be sure to get in touch with them or reach out to me.

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

People, projects, companies, and teams tend for forget the importance of analytics from the earliest stages of a product or service. Its free!

If you havn’t done so, go drop in free Google Analytics code to your website today.

It accomplishes a few things well and allows for accountability and facts in a world where it is needed most.

1. It lets possible investors wrap their head around the idea and traction
2. It allows monetization strategies to form based on usage trends
3. It focuses features and solutions to where heavy traffic is vs. what people say they want
4. It allows you to iterate on something that is a current pain point
5. It shows you the ebb and flow of transactions throughout your site
6. It shows bottlenecks and areas that need optimization
7. It shows sales and conversion funnel metrics to tie advertising to ROI
8. It presents users with relevant and actionable data if you choose to surface it back to them
9. It emphasizes what is working and with is not
10. It allows decisions to be made based on facts vs fiction

I started writing details about each, but a short top 10 list accomplishes my thoughts on analytics well.

You may not be “public facing” or feel analytics is not “mission critical” or throw any other cliche out, but I cannot think of a solid reason why you wouldn’t want to be tracking everything from day 0. Keep your stats private if you want, but make sure you are collecting them in the first place.

There is no such thing as back tracking stats you didn’t collect.

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Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

I manage everything via Email.

Yeah, very anticlimactic I know. I use two primary email inbox’s; Gmail and Outlook. Gmail gets about 5 accounts worth of mail and Outlook gets two accounts and is primarily for work. Gmail gets some work related emails that I manage various accounts for various reasons through gmail.com address or other emails.

The way I handle and process items that need processing is to simply tag anything that needs a follow up, action taken, response written, report pulled, or anything else is to simply tag it “to-answer”. In outlook it gets a flag (default is red).

I have made folders, different tags, used colors – nothing works but a simple system that I can sort through at any time. This way, when an item comes in and needs “processing” I can know if it get get done now, or it will be left in the “queue” for later.

Trust me when I say I have used every project management system out there. Its a big part of what I do to checkout the latest email inbox solutions, sorting magic, priority management, and analytics systems and nothing has come close to the efficiency of tagging things for follow up.  I hope to try a better solution one day – but so far I have not found one.

The magic comes in the fact that I label and use descriptive keywords in emails I send and rely heavily on great search. Gmail solves this by living in the cloud. Outlook 2007 has a less cripled search than 2003, which has worked to date. I keep all my email so I have a trail of everything, and lose less items with it all living in one inbox “stream” vs. scattered around folders.

Action items can be scanned and some sit for a week or so before they get handled. Others are in place to make sure I do not drop the ball on something and others do not either. They are visual reminders that someone else has the ball, and should follow up soon – something I can ping them on if an action item stays in the “to-answer” pile too long.

So that is my system. Its powerful search + simple tagging.

I would love to know what you use as I know there is always room for improvement.

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

Amazingly accurate

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

The main takeaway for me over the course of the half day event was that quality over volume wins every time. Many campaigns have an ability to gain a large share of voice simply by throwing media dollars at traditional channels to try to capture market share, but this strategy is quickly fading.

The day was structured beginning with opening remarks by Fred Wilson, and John Borthwick of Betaworks as a primer to how companies in this space are viewed by those that provide capital for them to grow. This was followed by a number of case studies showing the

Seth’s opening presentation:

Social Media Stories 2.0

View more presentations from Seth Goldstein.

No amount of noise will change perception of a product or service and the only way to influence reality is to devote your time towards quality. There were many great case studies from this days events that I am sure are available on the web.

Post from: Marketing.fm - Eric Friedman