Last week I was attempting to surprise my girlfriend by taking her to see Leonard Cohen in concert. At some point I must have RSVP’ed to the event on Facebook, as you can see from the screenshot she saw on her Facebook page the day before the show. Facebook invited her to the show by telling her that I was attending! Since I had told her to block off the night, it wasn’t too hard to put it together. (Well, that and the fact that I made her listen to Leonard Cohen songs all week.

This reminds me a bit of the Beacon advertising disaster Facebook tried launching a couple of years ago.

Lesson: If you are trying to surprise someone, don’t tell the biggest gossip hound on the planet — Facebook!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Marketing, Social Media, Web

If you’re curious about journalism entering the virtual age, this is worth a watch:

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Social Media, Technology, Web

There has been a lot of discussion recently about URL shorteners, which have exploded in popularity due to the limited character count in Twitter (140 characters). Rather than wasting precious message space sharing a long URL, turn it into a small one that redirects people to the proper place.

TinyURL was the most prominent one initially, but many have sprung up, each offering various services and features. The allure is being able to track the specific URL that you created, which means that you can track your social influence by seeing who passes on your version of the particular link.

Bit.ly is one that does a good job of providing metrics and analysis to help you figure out where your link has travelled, but Digg.com is getting into the game. They have devised an elegant approach where you simply put a URL after “http://digg.com/” and it automatically turns it into a shortened URL, displays the site you linked, and a toolbar across the top with more options. Try it out:

http://digg.com/astekblog.com

URL shortening doesn’t come without implications for the structure of hyperlinks, which still rule the Web roost. Adding one more layer of interpretation has the potential to slow things down, cause more errors, or just complicate the system. Additionally, you should be aware that search engines place a substantial amount of weight on the keywords that you have in your URL, so if you are relying on inbound links (and who doesn’t?), it’s worth considering that search engines will not count these shortened URL’s in the same way as the permalinks you’ve worked so hard to optimize. For example, notice the category and title keywords in the URL for this blog:

http://www.astekblog.com/index.php/marketing/try-diggcom-for-url-shortening/

I see URL status moving in two directions, which should each be considered and used appropriately. 1) Permalinks (links that search engines see and won’t change like the one above) will continue to be essential in creating and classifying content on web sites. We will use search engines to reach these links. 2) In the social sharing world, shortened URL’s will gain more popularity as people start tracking their individual influence. It’s natural for Digg to get on this bandwagon since the entire point of Digg was to give people credit for “digging” URL’s, sharing them and gaining notoriety for finding cool things. Perhaps one or the other will win out. If it’s the latter, then sites will need to start building this social tracking capability directly into the permalinks themselves, which must be short enough to share.

It’s not going to take long for monetization to enter this game, where people receive more than social currency for initiating a link chain. One’s social network will become an even more valuable tool as advertisers begin to see the value of tracking recommendations amongst individual people. These recommendations will be more directly attributed to sales, which gives companies incentives to offer cash compensation or commissions to people who did the referring.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

I’m seeing more “free” offers come through friends feeds, such as on Twitter. I even participated in one, as an experiment. As always I encourage people to do whatever they want with Twitter, but we must consider the value of the collective attention spans we attract. The more people we reach see ads from you, the less they will value what you have to say. The number of ads you present is inversely proportional to the likelihood they will choose to continue hearing what you have to say.

We all now have the power to control what we hear and when we hear it, and that’s what’s new.

Now, the ads I’m seeing in particular on Twitter are for Macheist: I bought the @MacHeist 3 Bundle. 12 Top Mac apps worth $900+ for just $39 AND I just got Delicious Library 2 FREE! http://mhtweet.com/uQ1gyd

I happen to be someone who would be interested in this ad, as Macheist is a great program, but I’m torn. I know that many of the people who follow me wouldn’t be interested and would therefore just read it as a message I was passing on, however even less personal and constructive than a retweet. The social stream starts to feel more like a traditional ad campaign or SPAM in this context. Only now I have to weigh other factors such as personal trust. I know that the people I know will keep it to a minimum, and if they don’t, I (and others) will decide whether or not to keep listening.

In a world where the consumer gets to create and control his media, products and services must simply be good to survive. What’s interesting is that as more of my friends participate in promotions like the one above (three so far), the more compelled I feel to participate. This is for two reasons. One, I know that I won’t annoy them by sending it back, and in fact will reinforce their decisions to post. Two, some of this just boils down to basic peer pressure. If ten of my friends get something for free that I want, do I really want to be left out?

Having said that, I’m a huge believer in the power of word of mouth marketing, and this certainly falls into that category. It’s just a little more blatant than someone sharing that they enjoyed using a product. In this case, I’m not even sure my friends have used the product yet at all, which is why it feels less credible. I do appreciate the transparency of the message. It’s very clear where it came from, why it came to me, and what I could get out of it, which makes for a quicker assessment of value.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology

I think it surprises most people to learn that Twitter (and Facebook for that matter) are not profitable enterprises. It takes more than extreme growth and steady usage to make money, as explained in this post urging us not to forget lessons learned from the dot-com bubble bursting. Personally I feel that there are opportunities to monetize Twitter than haven’t been full explored. There is money to be made in the spin-off apps such as Twitterrific, which syndicates ads from The Deck in order to provide a free version.

The problem is an antiquated method of procuring profit from eyeballs. Many of the tactics that used to work simply don’t fly in the social media world. I’m not against making money, trust me, but we need to get more creative about it. Word of mouth marketing exists on Twitter. I have purchased a few items that I can trace to friendly tweets. But no one from those companies knows it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web

And it’s a good thing. Since the newspaper industry, much like the music industry, resisted the Internet rather than embracing it, they shot themselves in the foot. Rather than proactively identifying opportunities they missed the boat entirely and are now suffering badly. Reminds me a bit of how Kodak could have OWNED digital photography if they had a bit of vision a few years ago. Instead they are playing catch-up, too.

In the newspaper’s race to play catch-up, they started giving it all away for free since that was the culture. We all grew up on a free Internet (I even remember when we used to think there would be no ads. HA) and that is being threatened in various ways.

The opportunity now is for newspaper’s to collectively demonstrate their worth by asking people to pay for the content they provide. Everything business has to do this, they have just been around so long they took their status and distribution model for granted.

I’ve been a little hard on mainstream media and probably sound like I want social media (blogs, etc.) to replace it. That’s not quite right. I believe they are complementary and both necessary. We need in-depth reporting and someone who can afford to put a correspondent in Iraq. We also need citizen journalists who are not influenced as directly by big business.

Here is a good explanation of why media must charge for web content. I think the key to pricing lies in micropayments, which use new technology to charge a very small amount of money (cents not dollars) for each piece of material you consume rather than paying full price for a newspaper you only read part of anyway. We just need to find a way to make it work on a small, local level.

Read this great article describing some real world ramifications of a future without mainstream journalism from The Atlantic. Kinda scary.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

In the Woodfield Apple Store last night, I noticed that Apple is now displaying ads for Yelp and Twitter on their walls. This is part of the huge campaign to promote iPhone apps, but I was encouraged that these services (especially Twitter considering the benefit of using it on a mobile device) are now considered mainstream enough to get people’s attention in such a heavily branded environment.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

A particularly great game this year, though I felt that the commercials were lacking. The word “sleazy” was used by some party-goers to describe the GoDaddy ads, but the ends have always seemed to justify the means for Bob Parsons. The Doritos snow globe ad was entertaining and Audi was fun.

What makes the ads really fun is dollar betting. At the beginning of each commercial break, we’ll each throw down a buck and guess what type of ad will come up first (soda, beer, car, etc.). Side bets are common, and at one point someone started betting that there would or wouldn’t be a web site listed in the ad. I was intrigued and took a few of these bets.

I wasn’t as sensitive to it before, but this revealed quite plainly how many large non-dotcom companies didn’t list their web site on the final “info screen” of the commercial. Three that stood out were Toyota, Budweiser, Audi, and Heineken. I’m not alone. Regarding the Audi ad, Michael Lebowitz of Forbes said, “Jason Statham is a good choice. Funny, but doesn’t rely completely on gags. A solid spot, but where’s the URL? Am I going to be asking that all night long? It’s 2009, right?”

My interpretation of this is optimistically to believe that it wasn’t simply a gross oversight from these companies, but that they have determined that people find them through search engines. Certainly with well-known brands like these, the appropriate web site comes up immediately through a Google search.

But at the end of the day, putting your web site URL on as much of your marketing material as possible is the best bet. People have come to expect it, and to an extent are comforted by it. Every ad has a final page of info to leave a lingering impression, or reinforce existing impressions. So why not take up a small piece of this valuable real estate to point people to your web site? Even if they are right about people using search engines to find them (or I’m right about giving them the benefit of the doubt), is it ever worth losing the minority of people who aren’t?

Consider especially that these ads will be posts to thousands, if not millions, of web sites as embedded YouTube videos. The more info about your company that you can put in the video itself the better since all the other pieces might not make their way to the viewed web site.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web

Back from BlogWell — a riveting, fast-paced look at how some of the big guys do social media. I caught presentations from The Mayo Clinic, Proctor & Gamble, Sharpie, and Molson (who filled a spot at the last minute and brought much beer). Consistent themes included:

• Start with a simple campaign or technology, then grow.
• It’s not about marketing. It’s about interacting.
• Be proactive about transparency and disclosure.
• Don’t pour beer into a frosty mug (drop a note in the comments to find out why)

I was especially struck by the presentation from Susan Wessel at Sharpie (and not just because of the limited edition Barack Obama Sharpie’s), who indicated that for all their visibility, Sharpie is actually a pretty small company. As the primary PR rep for the company, she engaged in blogging and Twitter on her own time. I think this is the way it’s going to be for businesses for the foreseeable future who are unwilling or unable to commit additional resources to social media campaigns. In this case, she wanted to prove its value and the only way to do that was to do it. This is truer of blogging than any other form of marketing I’ve seen. The worst thing you can do is never start.

Maybe I especially remember Susan since I got her very last limited edition Barack Obama sharpie marker. Good word of mouth there.

Here are a couple of photos of Andy Sernovitz from GasPedal/The Blog Council and Adam Moffat from Molson mid-beer:

Here’s a good write-up on BlogWell from Chicago Tech Report.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web