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

The Death of TechCrunch?

(AKA "Why AOL and Arianna Huffington are anti-social-media idiots!")

This may have changed by the time I post this article, but as of right now, I'm convinced that AOL and Arianna Huffington care more about their own power than in making sound business decisions.  They want to oust Michael Arrington and put in an editor-in-chief of their choosing.

It's another bone-headed move by AOL, in a long history of bone-headed moves, to stake a claim on one of its more successful web properties.  Huffington, I believe, is weighing in on the matter in order to mark her own territory on what she sees as her potential property at AOL, despite having no direct control over what goes on, currently, at TechCrunch.

See the article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/the-end/.

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.

Site Updates

To all my readers:

Over the next few months, the site will be going through some back-end changes that will cause change to its look fairly regularly. Don't worry though, because the content will still be here for your perusal. I've been taking some web design classes so I don't have to rely so heavily on Blogger to control my site layout. Keep reading, and don't forget to post comments on the posts you like, even if they're old; you never know what could spark a discussion!

-MJP

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."