Archive for 2009

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Twitter and Skittles: An Experiment in Open Social Branding

March 2, 2009

In what may be a first from a major brand, Skittles has begun experimenting with integrating community comments and inputs into its online presence via Twitter Search and RSS feed.

The Skittles.com website has become a mashup of the brand and its community’s Tweet stream.

I am not sure what the short term or long term implications will be for the brand, but one thing is for sure this particular mashup approach is innovative by any definition.

Skittles.com

Skittles.com

In exchange for participating in the new Skittles.com website, visitors are asked to simply provide their birthday.

Skittles Audience

Skittles Audience

I suspect by day’s end with this simple request Skittles will have a more clear idea of who their online audience is vis-a-vis their average age.

Seems Skittles should have also asked whether their visitors were male or female – unless of course Skittles assumed the majority of their online visitors were going to be male.

The new Skittles home page still has a navigation box in the upper left hand corner where visitors can reach the brand’s website.

Taste The Rainbow

Taste The Rainbow

After being on the site for a while I received the following dialog box:

Return to Skittles Home Page

Return to Skittles Home Page

Unfortunately, I wasn’t ever able to reach the traditional Skittles.com home page from my Mac with  Safari or Firefox browsers.

I guess I will have to Tweet my experience with the new Skittles.com website on Twitter.

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Posted in Brand, Open Social Branding, Twitter, Twitter Search | Leave a Comment »

February 2009 WordPress Blog Traffic Stats

March 1, 2009

This blog: Search Marketing Communications generated its seventh highest month in terms of traffic during Febraury 2009 with 6.059 views.

Previously, this WordPress blog’s highest trafficked month was September 2008 with 22,897 views.

Approximately 27% as many views occurred during February 2009 as compared with September 2008.

Why the drop in traffic?

Because I switched this blog from a WordPress.com domain to my own private domain on January 28th and it has yet to get crawled and re-indexed in Google under my new domain name.

The vast majority of traffic this blog received in February 2009 came via search engines to posts written several months ago. Not a single one of my posts from February received any search engine referrals.

WordPress says it could take as long as six months for this simple change to recognized and acted on by Google.

If you are considering switching your WordPress blog to your own domain, you might think twice if you are looking to get search referrals anytime soon after the switch.

By the end of February 2009, searchmarketingommunications.com had been viewed 119,422 times since its launch in September 2006.

In its first month of existence this blog had 1,593 total views.

February 2009 traffic was approximately 4 times greater than September 2006 traffic.

Few people subscribe to this blog, thus the vast majority (an estimated 99% or greater) found this blog through some type of search query, which is why this blog is titled:

“Search Marketing Communications”

Search Traffic February 2009

Search Traffic February 2009

Third Largest Month Blog Search Traffic: 10,154 Views

February 2009 Total Blog Traffic

February 2009 Total Blog Traffic

Total Search Traffic February 2009

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Posted in Domain, Google, Traffic Stats, Wordpress Blog | Leave a Comment »

Google Innovations

February 28, 2009

David Pogue with The New York Times recently created a list of  innovations Google has produced or bought in its relatively short corporate history.

His list consists of Google products most any consumer who has been online in the last year would recognize including Google Earth, Gmail, YouTube and Blogger.

Some of the lesser known Google products and tools mentioned in Pogue’s New York Times article are: Google Docs, Picassa, iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Trends, Google Maps, Street View, Translator, 1-800-Goog411, Google SMS, Google Alerts and Google Sets.

Although the article begins by mentioning Google’s search box, Pogue doesn’t mention the greatest commercial result to come from Google’s search box by name: Google Adwords – arguably without which – none of Google’s other products would exist.

Maybe therein lies the keys to Google’s success.

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Posted in Gmail, Google, Google Adwords, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Search, Google Trends, YouTube | 1 Comment »

Google Music: Albums, Artists and Selling Songs

February 27, 2009

Last night while watching Stephen Colbert interview Kris Kristofferson, I became interested in learning more about the singer songwriters career.

Colbert’s interview mentioned some of Kristofferson’s accomplishments which included his being both a Rhodes Scholar and a Helicopter Pilot.

While watching the interview I searched Wikipedia and was surprised to learn Kristofferson flew helicopters in the Gulf of Mexico for Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI) a firm who’s helicopters I had flown in many times while commuting to my offshore oil drilling job when I was a teenager.

Even more surprising to me was the fact, according to Kristofferson:

‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ I wrote sitting on top of an oil platform.”

I did no such thing on top of the oil platform where I worked and I am pretty sure neither did anybody else.

I then decided to search for Kris Kristofferson in Google and noticed “Music” as an option in between “Web” and “Video”.

Google Music has been around several years, but I don’t ever recall seeing it as a vertical search option while searching for a particular recording artist.

Google Music

Google Music

Clicking on the recording artists name lead me to a list of Google Album results for Kristofferson which were presorted by popularity.

Google Music Sorted by Popularity

Google Music Sorted by Popularity

Clicking on the “More music results for Kris Kristofferson >” link produced both a list of Albums and Songs which featured Kristofferson.

Google Music Artists Albums Songs

Google Music Artists Albums Songs

A Google search for Johnny Cash produces a Music search option yet displays YouTube videos in the initial search results.

An extra click or two will get searchers to the same type of Album and Song page for Johnny Cash as Kristoffersons.

Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash

Is Google now monetizing their music related search with Album or Song sales?

When Google displays Artist information atop their search results are they in turn generating affiliate income from clicks to the iTunes Store and the others listed who are featured next to “Buy Album” call to action?

Google Buy Album

Google Buy Album

My question is  – Who’s really selling the songs?

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Posted in Google Music | Leave a Comment »

Finding Jobs on Twitter

February 26, 2009

Today while searching Twitter I discovered what was essentially a classified ad for a specific job.

Researching Twitter further, I found a variety of job offerings posted under generic searches for keywords including – jobs.

I stepped away from my computer for several hours this evening and upon returning I refreshed my browser where I found 1,364 posts had occurred with the keyword “jobs” in the Tweet.

Search Twitter For Jobs

Search Twitter For Jobs

An example of one of types of jobs I found on Twitter tonight was for an “Internship” at the White House.

White House Internship

White House Internship

Will Twitter’s platform one day evolve into an instant job messaging board?

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Posted in Jobs, Twitter, Twitter Search | Leave a Comment »

WhereImAt.com Google Maps Store Locator

February 25, 2009

Mel Bass with WhereImAt.com saw my post yesterday on IHOP store locations and decided to show how incorporating IHOP data would look in his site which uses Google Maps.

WhereImAt.com

WhereImAt.com

Drilling down into WhereImAt.com’s store locator data within Google Maps gives searchers viewing options they are probably already familiar with – the Map, Satellite, Hybrid or Terrain views.

WhereImAt.com Map View

WhereImAt.com Map View

What I think is unique about WhereImAt is the ability for searchers looking for a particular store to zoom in and see their target location in Google state of the art Maps.

WhereImAt.com Satellite View

WhereImAt.com Satellite View

Whether viewing by traditional map or satellite view, WhereImAt.com’s corporate store locator Google Maps application lets franchisors and their customers get more more dynamic store location image data than the mapping alternatives offer.

Where Im At Map View

Where Im At Map View

WhereImAt.com Map View

Store Locator Satellite View

Store Locator Satellite View

Store Location Satellite View

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Posted in Google Maps, Store Locator, WhereImAt.com | Leave a Comment »

Find and Map IHOP Restaurant Locations with Know Where Systems

February 24, 2009

Looking for the nearest IHOP restaurant to grab some free pancakes?

The International House of Pancakes restaurant chain is offering a free short stack of pancakes to diners today who in turn consider making donations to the Children’s Miracle Network.

Not sure where the nearest IHOP restaurant is located?

IHOP Know Where Systems

IHOP Know Where Systems

The IHOP website has an excellent store location map powered by Know Where Systems.

Free pancake hunters can locate their nearest IHOP by any one of several attributes on the IHOP site: State, Area Code, Area Code + Exchange, City + State, City name, State name or State abbreviation.

Planning a cross country trip on National Pancake Day?

IHOP Trip Planner

IHOP Trip Planner

IHOP in conjunction with Know Where Systems will plot all the pancake stops along a travel route too.

IHOP Locations

IHOP Locations

With IHOP’s store location finder and trip planner, pancake searchers should be able to easily locate their next and nearest stack of pancakes anywhere along their travel route.

Pancake Path

Pancake Path

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Posted in IHOP, Know Where Systems | 1 Comment »

Telonu.com and The Layoff Tracker

February 23, 2009

Today I came across an interesting AP story about two innovative websites.

With non stop media coverage on the state of the US economy and over 5 million workers collecting unemployment, worker layoffs have become commonplace.

Layoff Tracker is a website focused on tracking and reporting on the ever increasing number of layoffs occurring both in the US and abroad.

From Layoff Tracker:

These are tough times and we all have a layoff story to tell; something that happened to us or someone close to us. Share without linking to a particular company.

Layoff Tracker

Layoff Tracker

Layoff Tracker also provides a widget for website owners to publish Layoff information on their website.

Layoff Tracker Widget

Layoff Tracker Widget

Within information about each specific company, Layoff Tracker also provides user generated scores of up to five stars in several categories including an “Overall” rating, “Pay/Benefits”, “Work/Life Balance”, “Culture/Environment” as well as the company’s “Reputation with Recruiters”.

The website Telonu covers lets employees “Rave, Rant and Rate” about their workplace anonymously.

Telonu.com

Telonu.com

Telonu.com appears to be filling the void left by the web based workplace complaint category’s founding site ( …ked Company) which was launched during the tech bust.

I might go so far to say Telonu.com is …ked Company 2.0.

Whether Telonu institutionalizes the web based workplace complaint category or not remains to be seen.

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Posted in Layoff Tracker, Telonu.com | Leave a Comment »

Twittad: Monetize Your Twitter Profile

February 22, 2009

With Twitter continuing to make inroads into the consciousness of both the mobile and web communities, questions persist about how Twitter will make money.

Companies like Twittad.com have already begun trying to monetize Twitter traffic.

Twittad.com

Twittad.com

From Twitaps.com:

Twittad allows users to monetize their Twitter profile by serving a ad on the background of their profile page. With over 54 million page views on Twitter.com, and 50%+ of Tweets coming from the web advertisers are willing to pay for that space. Twittad allows the transaction to occur.

How Twittad works:

Twitter Users

Twitter Users

For Twittad Advertisers:

Twittad Advertisers

Twittad Advertisers

From Twittad.com:

TwittAd is not affiliated with Twitter.com. TwittAd was built using the Twitter open API.

It will be interesting to learn whether Twitter or another company discovers first how to capitalize and then monetize Twitter’s traffic.

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Posted in Twitter | Leave a Comment »

How Not To Market on Twitter

February 21, 2009

I received the following email from a Twitterer today which in turn has prompted this post: How Not to Market.

Twitter Follower Notification

Twitter Follower Notification

How Not to Market?

First set up a Twitter account under a sexy sounding girls name and then grab an image of the hottest looking girl you can find (preferrably a stock image you don’t have to pay for) Actually image ownership rights of the girl won’t matter because your site won’t be visited by anyone other than those you follow.

How Not To Market On Twitter

How Not To Market On Twitter

Next, get an affiliate account id for some spammy product that purportedly sells well with possibly your own domain pointing to the spammy affiliate page and then post your new prized domain on your Twitter profile page under your Web address.

Begin search for Tweets about Twitter or other generic non specific terms in Twitter Search.

Compile a list of recent Tweets and their authors to first stalk and then follow in the hopes their Twitter accounts will automatically follow you. If “stalkees” don’t automatically follow you back,  your hot girl picture should at least do the trick to get the followed to at least click through to your web address to learn more about what it is that you do.

This assumes the followed aren’t suspicious about your single update which upon reading sounds like the introductory sales script from a telemarketer’s cold call.

Then – PRAY! – those who you followed actually eyeball your spammy affiliate web site are also in the market for whatever it is your affiliate site is selling.

Twitter Web Address

Twitter Web Address

Increase click-throughs to your site and hedge your bets by making the biggest promise of all –  that your giving away endless quantities of cash – just like the latest Twitter spammer above who followed me did.

The problem with this “social media marketing model” is if anyone of the followed actually visit your website – they will do so only once and then they will probably be mad they were tricked into visiting your website to begin with.

If the new / social media marketer is lucky, they may even get a special  blog post written about just how special their social medai marketing  “user experience” was.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, User Experience | Leave a Comment »

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