Instagram Hangs Itself

Instagram's fame as THE
photo-sharing app is in jeopardy.

Instagram released its new terms of service overnight, and the backlash has been swift and sharp.  No one knows yet how this will play out, but many Instagram users are threatening to leave the service.

So what happened?  Their updated terms of service state that "you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."  Ouch!

If the debate gets any hotter, there could be government intervention or a law suit, which would hurt the company even more that user abandonment!

Instagram's response, so far, has been to say that this was a move taken to better integrate with its parent company, Facebook, which already does this a little.  I've seen ads that list profile photos and names of my friends as "Likers" of other pages that I should also, apparently, like.

The Marketing Take-away
This is a two-edged sword for marketers, because we LOVE to use customer data for our own purposes, and photos are part of that.  But with the severe infringement on people's personal information and images could cause consumers to lose confidence in companies that use this type of information to sell products or services.

My advice to marketers and companies?  Wait it out and see what happens before making the move to use people's Instagram photos and metadata to marketing anything?

Now tell me: what do YOU think about Instagram's new terms of service?

-MJP

Man of Steel hits 10 MILLION VIEWS!!!

When I was a kid, I absolutely LOVE getting to the theater early enough to catch all the previews!  Now, I just watch them all on YouTube.  The most recent one was the second trailer for Man of Steel, the Chris-Nolan-produced Superman reboot.

Nolan-branded entertainment is popular right now, thanks to his recently-completed Batman trilogy.  This latest Superman movie trailer got to 10 MILLION views in just three days, which points to an excellent opening next June.  I know I'll be going; will you?

Click "Read More" to view the trailer and continue reading!

More charitable giving as marketing material

My 30-foot-tall tree fell in my front yard on
December 1st, 2011.

Last week, a barrage of unusually strong wind came whipping through the western United States.  When it whipped over the eastern mountains of the Wasatch Front, my town was the hardest hit; the gusts were over 100 miles per hour!  For those of you keeping track, that's level-two-hurricane-strength winds!

MORE cheap ways to help your "personal brand"

In my original post, "Cheap ways to help your 'personal brand'...," I mentioned two specific methods: improving your LinkedIn profile and setting up a professional blog.  I still recommend these two methods to everyone.  However, looking back, there was WAY more I could have said!

To keep with the theme from the first, however, I'll mention only two others:

The best of James Bond, in ONE novel!

From an article in The Guardian:


In a shocking turn for the debut novel by Q.R. Markham, Assassin of Secrets, the US publisher is recalling all copies and offering refunds to those who have already purchased the book.  The UK publisher is taking back all copies of the book before it is released there this week.  Why are they doing it?

The answer is simple: plagiarism.

Minor Leauge Player Falls into Marketing Gold!

Recently, a minor league outfielder facilitated a triple play with his head. His quick reaction and cool execution, despite what must have been a decent headache, could be used to promote the team and help his career. The key will be to market the incident properly.

Google+ Gets Verified!

The Internet is a crazy place, and there are all types of even CRAZIER people using it! Verification on Google+ and other social networks for celebrities and other public figures ensures that when I try to follow my favorite movie star, I can. There's nothing worse than following someone, then finding out that it's actually a 17-year-old kid in Korea.

The Color of Money

No, I'm not talking about the movie with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman; I'm talking about something green - hence, the "color of money" reference - but also tasty.  It's a client I'm working for right now: Kicking Lizard.

Logos through the Ages, Part 3

"Fall into the Gap!"

That's the most recent Gap slogan I can remember, and I think that was a WHILE ago.  To the right was their new logo for a week back in October.  It's not a bad logo, but it's SO different than the look of their older logo.

For Social Media Jugglers...

Click on the title to be re-directed to one company's take on juggling social media. The most relevant point for me was the suggestion to simplify. Yes, I can try to be on as many as possible, but when the possibilities are at the expense of quality, I should stop. When I have to decide between commenting on a friend's blog post or signing up on Digg, I should forget the latter.

Post a comment about your challenges juggling social media. I'd love to hear what you think!

- MJP

Wasting time like a pro!

I just read an article on SocialMediaToday.com called, "6 Ways to Waste Your Time on Social Media." Click the title of this post to go directly to the post. It did a great job of pointing out some fairly common ways that a lot of people, including myself, waste time in the social sphere.

Cleaning House, Part 1

In these tough economic times - I wonder if it's EVER really "NON-tough" - marketers are looking for cheaper means of communicating with customers. Most often, people turn to "non-traditional" methods like Facebook and other social media to spread messages and build customer databases, but a new fad is emerging. The new "social media" for communication and data-building is actually one of the oldest tools in the marketing arsenal: direct mail.

Over the next few posts, I'll talk about the following topics, and hopefully get some responses supporting or refuting my claims:
- List Hygiene
- Targeting
- Prospecting
- Creativity

Now, before people start attacking me with questions, I know that many marketers HATE direct mail; I too am a hater. That being said, there are advantages to this type of marketing that aren't possible with web advertising and Facebook accounts. Feeling something in your hand, even if for a moment before throwing it away, leaves an impression in your brain that's different than seeing a web ad; there's an interaction in that second that can't be duplicated digitally.

Using Twitter for E-Commerce and Beyond

According to Nielsen's NetWare statistical survey, 41.7% of Twitter users are between the ages of 35 and 49. For companies, this is a prime demographic, full of influencers and decision-makers that can help propel sales and brand recognition on budgets that are a lot smaller than in years past.

Many probably know already that Twitter is a great way for companies to get feedback directly from customers, but the following article, "How to Use Twitter for E-Commerce," is a great introduction to using the site for more than just "feedback." Readers might be shocked at the possibility of using an online short message service (SMS) to sell products and services; I know I was!

Image via CrunchBase

If you think about it, you'll realize that it’s fairly similar to companies that send SMS messages via phones. In both cases, customers and prospects opt-in to receiving messages - on Twitter, they’re called “tweets” - from certain parties. Despite the similarities, however, Twitter’s the biggest thing in messaging these days. The Nielsen report, mentioned earlier, states that Twitter has grown 1,382% from February of 2008 to February of 2009. That's at least 10 times faster than any other social networking site.

Managers and marketers should read the following article to get some insights into using Twitter for e-commerce and regular sales.

Here’s the article:

How To Use Twitter for E-Commerce - Website Magazine - Website Magazine

Posted using ShareThis

Nudge, Nudge

Thank you to all the people who've been reading this blog. I really appreciate it, and in an effort to shamelessly self-promote the brand, I would ask everyone who reads to scroll down on the left-hand side bar to the blog's Facebook Fan Box. Click on the button, "Become a Fan."

My goal is to have everyone that reads this blog to go and become a fan. For now, the only thing you can expect is a big, fat "thank you" from yours truly. However, in the future, there could be prizes involved for Facebook fans of the blog. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Word-of-mouth traffic, attracting and tracking

The following is an article I read on Lyris, a marketing website

Tracking & Attracting Word-of-Mouth Traffic

Written by Joy Brazelle - Serengeti Communications

Thursday, 16 April 2009

Word-of-mouth traffic can be some of the best, most qualified visitors to your site. But, how do you actually know if you are getting traffic from word of mouth? Pay-per-click and search engine optimization efforts are easy to track with Web analytics because you can segment out traffic based on the specific referrers or entry pages. You have to be a bit more creative to find the word-of-mouth traffic. 1. Check out your direct traffic (AKA no referrer). These visitors either knew your URL and typed it directly into the browser, or they had your Web site bookmarked. As your brand becomes part of more and more conversations, the number of visitors who will know your URL will naturally increase. 2. Check out your branded keyword traffic. This is the same concept as the direct traffic. Only for those visitors who cannot remember your URL, the most likely place they’ll look for you is on one of the top search engines. Word-of-mouth conversations about your brand will result in more traffic from the search engines by visitors searching on terms related to your brand. 3. Check out the blogs. Using free tools such as http://blogsearch.google.com/, you can enter specific dates to see if the number of postings about your brand is increasing month to month. You can set up a Google Alert to periodically receive this information. 4. Check out the blogs + other conversations. As many companies understand just how crucial it is to know what people are saying about their brand, paid tools like Trackur (http://www.trackur.com/) are becoming very popular. You can proactively see the conversations about your brand (and your competition) just by logging in. 5. Ask your customers. This is perhaps the most obvious and the most overlooked way to find out if people are talking about you. Talk to your customers. You may be pleasantly surprised to learn what your customers are actually saying about your brand. Encouraging and rewarding feedback is a great way to grow loyal customers who will be happy to say positive things about your brand to their friends. Once you benchmark the data for your word-of-mouth traffic you can begin to improve on it, and attract even more traffic by word of mouth. 1. Make it easy to spread the word. On every email you send, landing page you create, or any other online marketing campaign add a ‘Send to Friend’ link. Make sure you test the link to make sure that it does not break and it is easy to use. Also make sure that it is obvious that the user was successful. There is nothing worse than ruining someone’s experience with your brand by lack of testing or confusing functionality. 2. Make it worthwhile to spread the word. Reward your loyal customers and visitors. It is likely that a small percent of your customers will become true brand evangelists. These are your BEST and most important customers and you need to keep them happy. It is well worth the effort to go out of your way to make sure that these customers are appreciated and know it. 3. Use contests to grow word-of-mouth traffic and your email database. This is such a simple and great way to increase the volume and quality of word-of-mouth traffic, but it is often ignored. Create an email contest for your opted-in list that explains the contest. In the email, add a form so recipients can forward the email to their friends (e.g. five or ten) by simply entering the email address and first name into the form. It will involve some simple database programming, and some validation that the email addresses received are valid and qualified. But it is a simple way to encourage your loyal customers to spread the word, and grow your email marketing database at the same time. There is a fourth way to encourage word of mouth traffic. Be remarkable. OK - so that is not easy, not by any means. But it is great when companies really go the extra mile to be remarkable. About the Author Joy Brazelle is vice president and director of analytics for Serengeti Communications. She has made analytics her priority over the years, helping clients build and grow their online presence. Joy has been a member of the Web Analytics Association since its launch in May 2006. She stays plugged into the current world of analytics by participating in Facebook groups from "Web Analytics World" to "ClickTracks Addicts."

Three Things for Your Personal Brand

Personal branding is important for every marketer, if only to prove to potential clients that you understand what a brand is and how to build it.

According to an article I recently read in Deliver magazine, there are three main things that every personal brand needs. And frankly, I agree with all three. They are:

Expand your expertise
This is my favorite one of the three because it involves one of my favorite pastimes: learning to do new things. It’s the reason I manage a variety of groups on LinkedIn and the impetus behind me starting this and Bountiful® Wi-Fi’s blogs. It’s also the reason I’ve accepted so many different positions at my current company, from product design to quality assurance. I’m willing to do whatever they need me to do because it allows me to learn about several different parts of the business.

Boost your visibility
As a natural extension of expanding your expertise, your visibility will increase. You’ll meet new people who will therefore expand your network. Also, you should pick a few key places on the web to put information about yourself. I suggest LinkedIn, Facebook and one other, more industry-specific network. I like SocialMediaToday.com for the third one, personally. It's for social networking professionals only, so it's the perfect, industry-specific social networking site for me.

Protect your brand
With the additional visibility comes an increased danger. If someone does a search of your name, they’re bound to find the bad along with the good. Fortunately, this increased visibility also makes it easier for you to find and deal with threats. I’m not going to get into how to deal with affronts to your character in this post, but there are many ways to stop people from marring your otherwise reputable brand.

A tweet worth tweeting about

Image via Wikipedia

In an attempt to engage people that follow them on Twitter, Southwest Airlines did a "20,000th follower on Twitter" prize. The lucky winner was from New Mexico, and that person won a lot of travel-related promotional items branded with the Southwest logo.

This promotion was a success for two reasons. First of all, it engaged customers in a more social setting than television, print or a traditional website. Twitter, Facebook and other social networking outlets allow customers to virtually shake hands with companies they admire.

Secondly, it was just nice. They didn't HAVE TO do anything, but they did anyway, just to say, "Thanks." Often, there's no better reason for a company to do a giveaway; "just because" is a good reason to do promotions because customers often see it as a great big "hug," so to speak. And let's face it: everybody needs a hug every once in a while!

How could this happen?

News Corp. has decided to "dissolve" Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which has, up until this point, been their digital arm. That's sad, and even more sad is the fact that they might lay off 350 people in the near future. That being said, as a social networking specialist, I'm even more worried about that will happen now to my favorite part of FIM: MySpace; News Corp. already fired 400 employees at the former social networking juggernaut on Tuesday.

This revolutionary company turned the world upside down with its ability to network people across the globe like never before. It helped turn the Internet into the necessary part of life that it is today. Now it may disappear. Goodbye, old friend...