Social Media: Twitter – Time Waster or Prime Lead Chaser?
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 2, 2008 | Share This
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Please note that some of the names and identities in this post have been changed to protect the innocent. Or at least the indolent.
The question comes up more often than not with Twitter: “What the hell do you use that for?” Or the more succinct statement: “What a waste of time.” Yes indeed, like most social media sites you can spend time there doing all kinds of non-productive or boring or silly activities.
On the other hand Twitter has proven, for me and others, to be a fruitful source of leads, information and eventually sweet, sweet moolah.
Topics: Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »
Social Media: Putting Up Walls Just So Facebook Can Scale Them
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 1, 2008 | Share This
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The conventional wisdom has been that websites, especially media sites, benefit in traffic from having as much free content out there as possible, optimized for organic search. The New York Times was roundly criticized for making members pay for some content as has been the Wall street journal among others. After all, the growth in online profits is most likely to be driven by advertising growth and walling off a portion of your site limits the number of people who will use it.
Still, social media sites, while remaining mostly free of charge, rely on walls to protect the integrity of their users’ personal information. This hasn’t hurt their popularity at all and in fact the biggest sites boast audiences that other online sites are salivating to get their hands on and market to.
Topics: Advertising: Online, ECommerce, Facebook, Google, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Search News: Gobble it Up – This Year’s Big ‘Ol Thanksgiving Turkeys of Search and Social Media
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 26, 2008 | Share This
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It’s Thanksgiving eve here in the United States (in Canada they insist on having their Thanksgiving on a different day, same as with President’s day). Thanksgiving is a day to look back and think on all the things we have to be thankful for. Thanksgiving eve on the other hand, is a time to think about turkeys, those flightless ideas and people that must have seemed good at the time but were ultimately doomed to end up as someone else’s meal. Without further ado we hereby present this year’s Turkeys of Search and Social Media.
Topics: Just for Fun | No Comments »
Search News: Last Night a SERP Saved my Life – Cyberchondria and SearchWiki
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 25, 2008 | Share This
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My wife and I have a particularly naughty cat at home. Like many urban dwellers we find it necessary to place those little Raid roach discs around to keep unwanted visitors from parading through our kitchen area. This cat is obsessed with the discs – if they are not placed somewhere very inaccessible she will invariably locate it and bat and bite it to her heart’s content.
The first time we found a disc in the middle of the floor full of bite marks we freaked out, convinced that she had poisoned herself. While my wife called the vet I did what any right-thinking idiot would do and looked up the roach trap ingredients online to see what pet interaction warnings there were. To my relief, while not recommended, the discs would not kill her outright or even make her sick if she wasn’t regularly chowing them down whole.
In retrospect though, perhaps the interwebs wasn’t such a great place to turn to for feline health advice. After all, when it comes to human health the Internet is anything but infallible.
Topics: Google, Microsoft, Open Source, SEO, Search: News, Social Media, Wikipedia | No Comments »
Search Engines: Is Google’s SearchWicki Wack?
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 24, 2008 | Share This
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Response to Google’s new search tool, SearchWiki, upon rollout last week was not so much acclaim as confusion. Why now? Why at all? Why go uncharacteristically right past Beta? Why mess with the core search experience? Oh so many questions.
Already there are users out there who want their old Google back and don’t want to log out to get it. This is why GreaseMonkey was invented – it’s a measure of SearchWiki’s unpopularity in some quarters that there’s been code written to kill it.
So why would normally fussy Felix Unger-like Google transform user’s search results into a free-for-all that resembles Oscar Madison’s bedroom to some?
Topics: Google, Search: News, YouTube | 2 Comments »
RepriseMe: No. 1 - Shivan Durbal, Account Manager
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 21, 2008 | Share This
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Starting today, Fridays will be our day to meet some of the talented people behind Reprise Media with our new feature, RepriseMe. We’ve asked everyone to take a scientifically designed series of questions to elicit an emotional response. Oh wait, that’s Blade Runner.
Without further ado, we inaugurate our series with Account Manager extraordinaire Shivan Durbal:
Topics: Reprise Work and Play, RepriseMe, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Webinar: Search Adds Muscle to Flabby Campaigns – Now in Convenient Home Version
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 20, 2008 | Share This
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Anyone who missed last week’s co-hosted Reprise Media and comScore webinar, Adding Paid Search Muscle to Your Marketing in a Weak Economy, can now watch the full presentation online. Some of you may have even seen it once and want to watch it again a la Batman Returns. It’s not in IMAX however.
I had the pleasure of watching and listening live and was struck once again by the timeliness of the topic. Each passing week seems to bring more economic gloom and/or doom. For marketers and advertisers the question is simple: Can I get more for less?
As comScore’s Eli Goodman and Reprise Media’s Managing Partner Josh Stylman show the answer is yes, provided you calibrate your campaign properly to place search marketing at the hub of your efforts. As a trainer once told me, you have to strengthen your core to support strength throughout your body.
As I’ve discovered, thirty reps of Oreo dunks and lifts to mouth level don’t really do much for your core, but a great search marketing campaign does.
Topics: Advertising: Offline, Advertising: Online, Conferences & Events, Reprise Media, SEM: Paid Search | No Comments »
Social Media: Is Social Media Marketing a Predatory Pursuit?
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 19, 2008 | Share This
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The quote du jour today was from Ted McConnell, General Manager of Interactive Marketing at Proctor and Gamble, who said this about Facebook in AdAge:
“I think when we call it ‘consumer-generated media,’ we’re being predatory…Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”
Though the quote seems to have stirred mixed feelings around the blogosphere I think it’s a pretty common initial reaction to the idea of advertising within user-generated content. This is especially true for a company like P & G which is still feeling it’s way online while still spending the bulk of its ad dollars on “traditional” offline media.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Blogging, ECommerce, Facebook, Google, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Search News: Black Friday Promotions Not All Black and White
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 18, 2008 | Share This
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When Black Friday comes
I’ll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes
I’ll collect everything I’m owed
And before my friends find out
I’ll be on the road
When Black Friday falls you know it’s got to be
Don’t let it fall on me – Steely Dan
Sorry to hit you all up with the Dan first thing, I know they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I felt the lyrics are appropriate for what is shaping up to be a challenging (ie lousy) retail season.Still for all that more people than ever are expected to search online for bargains this year.
Topics: Advertising: Offline, Advertising: Online, ECommerce, Legal Issues, Search: News, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Search News: Scoring with Digits – How the Phone Can Be Your Lifeline Online
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 17, 2008 | Share This
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The greatest product placement in film history may be in Ron “Opie” Howard’s film Apollo 13, the true story of the time Tom Hanks got lost in space with Kevin Bacon and Chet from Weird Science. There they are sitting in a space capsule – the culmination of mankind’s entire technological prowess – and essentially powerless and on the brink of death. What saves the day for them? Good old, low-tech duct tape.
Similarly paid search advertising is the marvelous distillation of everything learned since the ancient Egyptians first used papyrus to advertise pyramid parties. Yet there are cases where we have to turn to a comparatively lower-tech solution to measure the result of a paid search campaign: enter Alexander Graham Bell’s humble telephone.
Topics: Advertising: Online, ECommerce, SEM: Paid Search, Search: How-To, Search: Innovations, Technology | No Comments »