Friday, June 6, 2008

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Why Gmail’s 13 New Options Suck and 6 We Desperately Need

Posted: 06 Jun 2008 08:55 AM CDT

Some of you may have noticed that yesterday’s 6pm PDT launch of Gmail Labs came and went. The Gmail team promises that “We are currently in the process of rolling Labs out to English users” but I’ve yet to see it in my Gmail account.

Still, we can get a sneak peak of what to expect, thanks to TechCrunch’s screenshots:

I looked through the list of the 13 new options we’re getting and, you know what, they all suck! I mean seriously, about the only thing of use is the option (finally) to place your signature file ahead of the quoted text and not at the bottom each time. We had to wait for that to be added as an experimental feature?!?

Here are the features Gmail desperately needs:

  1. One-click, this is spam, never show again. When I mark something as spam, please give me the option–not some complex filter–to never see email from that sender again. There are many times I mark an email spam, then have to mark it again, and again.
  2. This is not spam, ever! On the opposite side, why won’t Google let me white-list email addresses? I get many false-positives, that I mark as not spam, only to find them in my spam folder again. One example, emails sent from support@trackur.com to support@trackur.com end up in my spam folder–every time!
  3. When I say forward, forward! Similar to above. I have many email addresses that I run through Google Apps. I can’t possibly log into each mail.domain.com account each day, so I forward them all to a central Gmail account. So, why is it that, even though I have a filter to send ALL email to that account, Gmail still wants to apply a spam filter first? I have to login to each account periodically, just to sift through and find the emails that should have been forwarded.
  4. Drag and drop. In Google Reader, I can drag and drop the order of my RSS feeds. Big deal. How about giving me the option to drag and drop emails into my “labels” (folders)? That would be so much easier than using the drop down menus.
  5. The Label Abyss. Speaking of labels, have you ever suffered from the label black hole? Here’s how it works. I label an email with, say, “conferences” and then hit archive. I then head to the “conferences” label and my email is not there! Nowhere to be found. If I search for the email, I find it in the search results, complete with the little icon that shows it’s labeled “conferences,” but I don’t see it when I directly navigate to that label.
  6. Mark as important, confidential etc. Maybe I’m missing it, but how about giving me the option to mark an email as confidential, private, or even important? While we’re at it, how about a read receipt request too?

I could actually go on, but I want to hear from you. Is your Gmail life complete, now that you can play a game of “Old Snakey” instead of composing an email? Or, are there Gmail features you’d like to see?

Google AdSense Not Quite Live on Feedburner; Go Check For Yourself

Posted: 06 Jun 2008 08:23 AM CDT

We thought that we might have seen Google AdSense for Feedburner at the beginning of this week, but better late than never.

Checking my Feedburner account today, I noticed that the option to display AdSense ads in my RSS feed, is now live!

FALSE START: I just noticed that the AdSense option is below the “On Your Website” heading, not the “In Your Feed” heading. Oh well, we know it’s coming, so hold tight.

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Twitter Toys Galore

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 10:28 PM CDT

Even if you don’t know who Michael D. Jensen is, chances are if you use Twitter you know of one of his apps.

For the last months Jensen has become one of the premier Twitter App developers, creating applications that utilize the Twitter API in fresh and creative ways.

According to Jensen it began with a Tweet from Lee Odden:

@mdjensen some of these tools remind me of what you made for MyBlogLog. Any chance you’ll get into the Twitter tools game?

And from there he has had the Twitter application development fever.

TweetBeep – Launched May 6, 2008

TweetBeep is allows you to receive alerts when various key terms you enter are mentioned on Twitter. You can receive an email when someone is twittering about you, your company, your product, or your website. This is obviously a great reputation management tool, especially as Twitter grows in relevance among the everyday social media user.

Jensen stated that TweetBeep is his favorite Twitter creation:

"I think TweetBeep is huge, especially with the capability of seeing links despite the tinyurl/snurl/twurl. TweetScan is the only other “alert” service out there (last I checked) but they limit it to daily or weekly alerts, and no advanced features."

LiveTwitting – Launched May 8, 2008

Jensen developed LiveTwitting.com due to a perceived need to organize and consolidate twitter coverage posts during live sessions at conferences and events. With LiveTwitting.com you can easily twitter in real-time, and then reuse the coverage in a blog post or other medium.

"LiveTwitting.com came as a result of reading a conversation on Twitter between @dannysullivan and @lisabarone, about live twittering conference sessions. Danny mentioned that there was a lack of tools for consolidating tweets after the fact. I twittered with Danny, he sent me some of his ideas/specs, and out came livetwitting.com. "

TweetAnswers - Launched May 12, 2008

TweetAnswers.com was created to help Twitter users find quick answers to their questions. The concept is similar to that of Yahoo Answers, of which Jensen is a fan, and sees great benefit.

HappyTwitDay - Launched May 31, 2008

HappyTwitDay records users wishing each other happy birthday on the platform, also offers the salutation and adds the information to HappyTwitDay.com. The app tracks how many people wished you happy birthday, and you can look up other Twitter users' birthdays, or who shares the same birthday as you.

"HappyTwitDay is less useful than the other tools, but it is pretty fun"

Twanslate - Launched June 4, 2008

Twanslate is a Twitter Bot capable of translating tweets you direct message to @twanslate. This application has a ton of potential for Twitter users that travel, and need quick translation from their mobile device. Twanslate works with over 20 languages.

TweetBeep and TweetAnswers have a great deal of value to marketers. They allow you to not only monitor what is happening on Twitter in terms of your company or name, but also to utilize your followers for market research in real time.

As a fellow marketer it only stands to reason that Michael Jensen will continue to create great applications for our community. You can keep an eye on his developments by following him on Twitter @mdjensen

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Why Sculpting PageRank Is Not For Everyone

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 07:05 PM CDT

PageRank (PR) sculpting has popped onto the radar of most online marketers over the last few months and it has become a controversial topic. Like with so many new techniques in the online marketing world, some talented internet marketers are touting the value and success that they are having by using the nofollow tag to sculpt their PageRank, by directing as much link value to their most important pages as possible.

Adam Audette has written a well conceived article outlining why online marketers need to step back and think carefully about whether or not trying this new technique is the right thing to do. I think the majority of the points Adam makes are extremely valid, especially the point that if a marketer feels the need to use this technique excessively then there are probably much larger underlying problems, especially with the sites architecture.

A brief summary of Adam's 8 points:

1. Marketers don't know how much PR a page and or link has to begin with, a marketer never really knows if the changes that are being made are of real value or not.

2. The opportunity cost of spending time sculpting PR is a distraction from performing potentially more valuable tasks and may be masking other larger issues.

3. PR sculpting for large sites could become a management issue when many different developers are working with the same documents, potential over writes etc.

4. PR sculpting may be a band aid for larger site architecture issues.

5. It can create a negative user experience, especially if large authority sites use it to push pages with mediocre to poor user experience into positions of prominence.

6. PR Sculpting presents potential abuse problems and opens potential future risks to sites that use the nofollow tag excessively.

7. Internet marketers often focus too much on search engines and not enough on their users. This is nearly the same point as number five but approached from the point of why are we doing it instead of what the effect might be.

8. There is no standard of how the nofollow tag works from engine to engine and it is known Yahoo and Google handle these tags differently. Though they are working to try and standardize the way they work with these types of tags, they aren't there yet.

Adam has clearly spent a lot of time and effort creating a genuinely thought provoking article full of excellent research, quotes, and examples. I am not sure any of the points made are enough to convince talented internet marketers to reconsider the use of this technique as it does appear to be working and often times extremely well. However it will convince even those using the technique to step back and evaluate further how best to implement it not only for search engine rankings but for users as well.

Hopefully the article will also educate marketers, unfamiliar with the technique, to the potential pit falls associated with using a new technique like this and that knowledge can then allow them to make the proper risk reward decision.

Google Adding New “Labs” Options to Gmail

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:42 PM CDT

Earlier today, Google announced 13 new features in a new "labs" option for Gmail. Details are still trickling out, but, according to CNET, you’ll be able to use them as of 6pm PDT tonight.

Among the new features that are possible:

• A quick-link tool that lets people bookmark specific Gmail messages.

• Superstars, which lets people select custom stars to label mail.

• The "e-mail addict" tool that lets people lock themselves out of their e-mail account for 15 minutes.

• A fixed-width font option to view a message with in a font whose characters are the same width–handy for some formatting challenges.

For now at least, only Google engineers can add features. "Any engineer can code a labs feature," Coleman said. "Once the code is written and mostly working, it’ll get into the next product build that goes to users" through the labs feature.

What fun!

Linky Goodness, June 5

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 04:11 PM CDT

With a fair sprinkling of Google stories, today’s linky goodness almost qualifies as Googly goodness, but not quite.

Pilgrim’s Update: Save 34% off Andy’s new book - Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online

Yahoo Responds to Icahn: No You Cahn’t

Posted: 05 Jun 2008 03:58 PM CDT

As if things aren’t already nasty enough for Yahoo these days, this week, lawsuits and allegations abound that Yahoo’s spurning of Microsoft’s offer earlier this year was motivated by personal biases. Yahoo has responded to the most vocal (and likely most powerful) of their detractors, Carl Icahn, in a letter by Chairman Roy Bostock.

Icahn, a large shareholder of Yahoo, has already already attempted to file a proxy slate to replace the whole board, although his efforts have been rebuffed thus far.

Yahoo continues to resist Icahn’s hostile advances this week. Bostock begins the letter by stating that the board takes issue with Icahn’s June 4 letter and accusations: “Your letter seriously misrepresents and manipulates the facts regarding the recent events pertaining to Microsoft and Yahoo!” (It’s nice to have a company name with an exclamation point; it makes your points more emphatic without the tackiness of all caps ;) .)

Icahn characterized an “employee retention plan” as an employee walkout. Bostock says the plan was designed to protect employees who were fired without cause after a merger. He says the plan was also fully disclosed at the time of adoption, making it hardly a secret or a surprise now.

Bostock defends Yahoo’s actions, including the two decisions not to sell to Microsoft, saying that the board had only the best interests of the shareholders in mind.

The letter concludes with a final barb at Icahn:

Conspicuously absent from your letter is any credible plan for Yahoo! other than a repetition of your insistence that the Company should sell itself to Microsoft. Indeed, your stated view that “the only way to salvage Yahoo! in the long if not short run is to merge with Microsoft” demonstrates that you have no other plan and causes one to wonder what exactly would happen to our Company if you and your nominees were to take control of Yahoo!.

Well, no, it doesn’t cause one to wonder, since as Bostock said, Icahn obviously wants Yahoo to sell to Microsoft.

Will Icahn be able to make any progress this time around or will he only succeed in upsetting the Yahoo Board (mission accomplished there!)?

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